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Book 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Two-Minute Talks 



Short Discussions of Long Themes 



By 
AMOS R. WELLS 



^5 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

150 Nassau Street 
NEW YORK 



LIBRARY Of CONGRESS 

Two Conies Received 

AUG 27 1906 

COPY 8. 






Copyright, 1906, by 
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 



CONTENTS 



The Father's Care . 
Next Steps with God 
Our Possible Companion 
Big on the Inside . 
Go Straight for It . 
What Heaven is Like . 
Who Lives in Your House ? . 
How to Get a Fresh Start . 
-Bringing Others to Christ . 
Leaning on the Lord ••".'".'' . 
Fault-Seeing and Fault-Finding 
Blessedness at Hand 
Religion Through and Through 
Prodigals — and Fathers 
Some Sycomore Fruits . 
The Lad with the Lunch 
Power and Prayer 
Trials and Triumphs 
Getting Ready for Heaven . 
The Light of the World 
Doing His Will 
A Grist for Gratitude . 
Prayer That Obtains . 
--In the Far Country 
■Go! . 

When We Have Repented 
Bible Failures 
All We Need to Know about the Future 

3 



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Contents 



Confessing Christ .... 
If Cheist Should Come To-morrow 
A New Year in Christ . 
How to Listen . 
Time and Pains for Christ 
Growing up for God 
Spirit-Filled Christians 
Saying "Thank You " to God 
God's Promises 
Testifying for Christ . 
The Evil of Envy . 
Ministering to Christ . 
Reverence for Sacred Things 
How to Enter Christ's Family 
That Which Comes First 
Choosing a Hard Thing . 
Tempted and Tried 
Our Simple Duty 
The Broad Way : the Narrow Way 
Tares in Your Field 
The Great Surrender . 
What is Practical Christianity ? 
The Abundant Life 
Growing in Grace . 
cumberers of the ground 
How Can I Know that I am Saved 
The Secret of Endurance 
The Little End of Things 
The Needy at Our Door 
The Joy of Service 
-■Seek Souls 

How to Get Rid of Sin „ 
The Pathway to Peace . 



132 
134 

136 
138 
140 
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156 
158 
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186 
18.8 
190 
192 
194 
196 



PREFACE 

These tiny chapters are not intended to settle 
things. 

In one way of thinking, it is preposterous to 
discuss immortality, or some similarly great 
theme, within the narrow confines of five hun- 
dred words. From the reader's view-point, how- 
ever, the proceeding is entirely satisfactory. It 
is far more pleasant to do one's own thinking 
than to receive wisdom ready-made from another. 

That is what these little essays aim at, — to 
furnish starting-points and incentives for thought. 
To that end I have sought condensation, and 
have packed my pages as full as possible of meaty 
quotations and suggestive anecdotes and illus- 
trations. Kernels, I hope these may prove, 
that, buried in the fruitful soil of earnest minds, 
may bring forth their sixty-fold and hundred- 
fold. 

Therefore the only system to be found in this 
book is the system of a box of seeds. In the 
box, the grains lie in splendid disorder, uniform 
only in their happy potentialities. But I wish I 
were as sure of the thoughts' vitality as I should 
be of a harvest from the seeds ! 

Amos E. Wells. 

Boston. 



The Father's Care 



"Take no anxious thought for your life" is 
a command of God as imperative as any in the 
Decalogue. "Let not your heart be troubled" 
is a Christian precept as essential as " Follow 
Me." Indeed, worry leads to almost every other 
sin, and it is quite incompatible with the follow- 
ing of the Prince of Peace. 

To worry is to slander God. It is to ask in all 
earnestness the question Luther's wife asked the 
great reformer when he was in a fit of depres- 
sion : "Is God deadV It is virtually to deny 
God's love, or His wisdom, or His power, or all 
three. 

Because, if God loves you, and knows all about 
your needs, and has supreme ability to do just 
what is the best for you, what possible ground for 
anxiety can you have % 

Will you fear poverty? But God is the Cre- 
ator and Owner of all wealth ; and we have His 
promise that if we seek first His righteousness, 
all other things shall be added to us. 

Do we fear for our reputation, that we shall 
not receive the honor, fame, and station we de- 
sire? There is no honor that endures except 
what is registered in God's approval, and that is 
as sure to follow desert as daylight the rising of 
the sun. 

Do we fear failure % The only failure is not to 
seek God's will. What men call failure is a 
broken wire ; but God has a wireless telegraphy^ 

8 



The Father's Care 

and every desire to do right is sure of reaching 
the heart of the Almighty. 

And I may even ask, Do you fear sin ? Do 
you tremble before your own depravity, hide 
your head in the remembrance of your frequent 
yieldings to temptation, dread lest you lose your 
hold upon God altogether? Remember, He has 
Sis hold upon you. Though your weak grasp re- 
lax, His will not. Believe enough to know that 
God will help your unbelief. Trust God even for 
faith to trust Him. This is the climax and the 
reward of all faith. 

Let God have His way, and He will form your 
fortune as is best fitted for you. Do you know 
that every leaf of a tree has its place? Try 
placing a branch from one tree among the 
branches of another kind of tree, and you will 
see how awkwardly it fits. And if God's provi- 
dence looks out for leaves, will it neglect men ? 

God has not gone away and left this world to 
itself. The other day a special train was whirl- 
ing along in the dark on the New York Central 
Railroad. Suddenly a flash of lightning showed 
the engineer a telegraph pole lying across the 
tracks. He had just time enough to stop the 
train. Was there no God in that lightning 
flash? 

"In the great world there are no accidents : 
Enthroned above the ages' ebb and flow, 
Unseen, misunderstood, 
God rules, who iu all seasons and events, 
Through fiery evil and o'erwhelming woe, 
Forever works the good." 



Next Steps With God 



All through the Bible, when God has a great 
work to carry on, we see Him raising up workers 
to continue it. So Isaac succeeded Abraham ; 
and Joshua, Moses ; and Samuel, Eli ; and Sol- 
omon, David ; and Elisha, Elijah ; and Ezekiel, 
Jeremiah ; and Nehemiah, Zerubbabel ; and Tim- 
othy, Paul. "God removes the workers, but 
carries on the work." 

Sometimes when these great workers die, men 
think that the work they have been supporting 
will fall to the ground. But no ; it is as when 
men take the foundation from under a building, 
and it seems propped up on almost nothing. 
Soon, however, you see the building lifted grad- 
ually, and a new foundation laid, and new stories 
added that the old foundation was not strong 
enough to support. 

Jabez Bunting was for nearly sixty years the 
great leader of the English Methodists. After 
his death a speaker at a memorial meeting said : 
"When Jabez Bunting died, the star of Method- 
ism set. 7 ' "Praise God, that's a lie ! " fervently 
exclaimed one of the listeners. And it was. 

Now there is only one way by which the pyra- 
mids could rise, and that was by each course 
being a little higher than the one below it. So 
there is only one way by which humanity can 
rise, and that is by each generation being a little 
wiser and stronger and better than the one before 
it. When we think of our noble fathers and 

10 



Next Steps With God 

mothers it seems impossible for us to be half as 
good as they or do half as much ; but if the 
world is to progress, we must eveu surpass them. 

Of course we caunot do it in our own strength, 
any more than the stone could pile itself up into 
pyramids. When we think of the great duty of 
progress that rests upon us, what a comfort it is 
to remember that ours is a God of progress, — no 
stolid Buddha, but a Being who is continually 
moving onward, and carrying His obedient chil- 
dren with Him. 

The path of obedience is always the path of 
progress. Do what your conscience tells you that 
God wants you to do, and little duties will open 
out surprisingly into glorious privileges. Moody 
was in training to succeed Finney, and the other 
great evangelists of the past, and he did not 
know it. But the boy, as his biographer says, 
"went to church every Sunday, because he had 
promised to go. ? ' That led him to Sunday-school. 
Then he saw that he ought to join the church, 
and he did. Then he began to speak in the 
prayer- meeting, "much more zealously than 
grammatically." And so he went on, taking 
little steps along the pathway of obedience, until 
he became one of the greatest men the world has 
known. 

What Moody did, millions of others have done, 
not always so conspicuously before men, but just 
as really. Take next steps with God, and some 
day He will bring you out on top of a pyramid ! 



II 



Our Possible Companion 



A man is, largely, what his friends are. It is 
almost impossible to retain purity of character if 
your friends are vile, and quite impossible to live 
an evil life if your friends are all noble. 

Eecognizing this fact, who would not leap at 
the chance of having for his intimate companion 
a strong, true soul like Phillips Brooks, a beau- 
tiful spirit like Florence Nightingale, a great 
genius like Tennyson, a masterful leader like 
Gladstone ? Would not all of us sacrifice much 
in order to enjoy such a comradeship? 

And here is open to our constant companion 
ship the Creator of all these great men and 
women, the Source of their noble impulses, the 
Fire of their genius, the Maintenance of their 
courage ! There is nothing which one could de- 
sire of an earthly companion that is lacking in 
Him, while He has infinite resources that are 
beyond any worldly friendship. Is it not incom- 
prehensible that we should slight such an oppor- 
tunity, and sometimes neglect it altogether ? 

It is like accepting a post-office when we might 
as well have a kingdom. 

No one that has ever made trial of this com- 
panionship but rejoices in it above all other joys* 
The misery of the world is because that com- 
panionship is lacking. 

The basis of the companionship is prayer. But 
it is not all prayer. Much of it is merely listen- 
ing, to hear God speak to the soul. Much of 
it is merely meditating on the loftiest themes. 

12 



Our Possible Companion 

Much of it is merely living with God and work- 
ing with Him. 

When, in looking at a beautiful sunset, your 
heart turns adoringly to Jehovah, you are enjoy- 
ing this companionship. 

When, obeying an inward prompting, you go 
to some house of death to comfort the mourners 
with talk of the Lord of life, you are enjoying 
this companionship. 

When, in your Bible- reading, you stop, filled 
with sudden, glad amazement at some vast truth, 
you are enjoying this companionship. 

When, in talking with a friend, you two hold 
sweet discourse of God, and a peace steals over 
your spirits, and the sense as of an Emmaus bene- 
diction, you are enjoying this companionship. 

Thus you may have this companionship at all 
times, when you are by yourself, or with men or 
nature, as when you are consciously and pur- 
posely alone with God. 

And, alas ! you may also forego this compan- 
ionship, annul it, and drive it from you. God is 
visible and audible ; but the eyes and ears of the 
soul are so easily closed ! The world is so inter- 
esting ; alas, that it should destroy our interest 
in the One who makes it interesting ! 

You wish and expect to spend eternity with 
God. Think what it means, then, if you are 
losing the sense of His presence, the joy of His 
companionship ! It means what it signifies to 
the young artist to become blind, the young 
musician to become deaf, the young orator to 
become dumb. It destroys your occupation for 
eternity, when you lose your companionship with 
God! 

13 



Big on the Inside 



In the vegetable kingdom, there is no such 
thing as standing still, year after year. Either a 
tree is pushing out new roots and new branches 
every spring, enlarging its girth and increasing 
its height, or its branches are withering, its trunk 
is rotting at the core, and the entire tree is on 
the way to ruin. 

Also in the kingdom of the spirit there is no 
standing still. Either your soul is bearing new 
fruit, and strengthening itself ever to bear more 
fruit, or the power of fruit-bearing is passing 
from it, perhaps forever. 

Therefore you can hardly ask yourself a more 
serious question than this, i i Am I growing in my 
spiritual life? " And you can hardly consider a 
matter more important than the means to such a 
growth, for time and for eternity. 

"If I had a son, 77 once said a distinguished 
theological professor, "I should tell him many 
times a day to make himself as big a man on the 
inside as possible. 77 Men are too much occupied 
with outside growth, or the appearance of it; 
with large salaries, important positions, men 7 s 
applause. Look rather within. Get soul power, 
get riches of the mind, and the outer life will 
follow. 

No tree can grow without tree food, and neither 
can a man's spirit grow without spiritual food. 
What would you think of a man who should not 
take any food except what he could manufacture 
himself? He would starve in a few days. But 
we are all the time forgetting to go outside our- 

14 



Big on the Inside 

selves for our spiritual food, aud no wonder our 
souls are often starving. 

Where shall we seek these supplies ? 

First, in the Bible. If every Christian should 
take, every morning, a single Bible verse, and 
meditate upon it for fifteen minutes, the power 
of the church and the happiness of Christians 
would be increased many times. 

Then, in prayer. Prayer is talking with God. 
Much so-called prayer is only talking to God. 
Prayer that means growth requires two things, 
that there is something you really want, and that 
you continue to pray till you get an answer. 

Another means of growth is struggle. Trials 
are like the winds that toughen the tree's fibre. 
They are more than that to the soul, for they 
actually make it grow, just as exercise makes a 
child grow. Sickness, disappointment, failure, 
poverty, bereavement, if they are borne in the 
spirit of Christ, draw one up toward the stature 
of Christ. 

But after all, just as the chief element in plant 
growth is the sunshine, so the chief element in 
soul growth is love. Love God, and you will 
grow in power of serving Him. Love men, and 
you will grow in ability to help them. Love is 
an unfolding. There is no school like love. That 
is why we are going to grow in heaven far more 
than on earth — because we shall love far better. 
As Miss Hai^ergal sings, we are to go on 

" 'From glory unto glory,' with no limit and no veil, 
With wings that cannot weary and hearts that cannot fail \ 
Within, without, no hindrance, no barrier as we soar, 
And never interruption to the endless l more and more. ; ;> 

15 



Go Straight for It 



One of the presidents of the London Chamber 
of Commerce, a man of long and eminently suc- 
cessful business experience, was once asked to 
write down the principles that, in his judgment, 
would insure success. He wrote a number of 
sage maxims, but the first two are especially 
worth heeding : " Have a definite aim. Go 
straight for it !" 

If we are to accomplish anything whatever, it 
must be by means of a clear-cut purpose coupled 
with a determined will. A vague desire to be 
better and do more will profit nothing. The ac- 
complishing Christian must heed the stirring 
words of Phillips Brooks, who cried : ' ' Come, 
take that task of yours which you have been hes- 
itating before, and shirking, and walking around, 
and on this very day lift it up and do it." 

Heaven will not help us, even to do heavenly 
work, until we first help ourselves. Max Miiller, 
the great student of Oriental languages, once 
asked a certain Hindu whether Ramkrishna, the 
Hindu teacher, knew Sanskrit. u Yes," was the 
reply. u Eamkrishna was living in the jungle, 
and a beautiful woman, coming down from 
heaven, taught him Sanskrit." u Nonsense!" 
cried Miiller, impolitely but sensibly. "The 
only way to learn Sanskrit is to get a grammar 
and a dictionary and go to work. ' ' And that is 
the only way to learn the language of heaven — 
do God's will. 

It may not be a large work, this new work you 

16 



Go Straight for It 

are to undertake for your Lord ; but you can un- 
dertake it in a large spirit. I very much admire 
that laborer who stood outside Cologne Cathedral 
and said to a traveler, " Yes, it's a fine building, 
and took us many a year to finish. " " Took 
you?" exclaimed the traveler. "Why, what 
did you have to do with it?" The reply was 
sufficient and convincing : "I mixed the mortar, 
sir." Lowell's lines are as true of work for 
Christ as of secular employment : 

1 ' No man is born into the world whose work 
Is not born with him ; there is always work 
And tools to work withal for those who will 
And blessed are the horny hands of toil ! 
The busy world shoves angrily aside 
The man who stands with arms akimbo set 
Until occasion tells him what to do, 
And he who waits to have his task marked out 
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.' ' 

And though your work may be small, make it 
as great as you can! "The real worker," de- 
clared Joseph Parker, l ' never says, i How little 
can I do ? ' but always, ' How much can I do ? ' " 
In the church there are, even yet, sadly few am- 
bitious souls. It is better to speak convincingly 
the praises of Jesus than to win cases before a 
jury or carry a bill through a senate. It is bet- 
ter to discover new ways of reaching souls with 
God's truth than to discover the North Pole. It 
is better to win one victory over evil than to con- 
quer the most brilliant army ever brought into 
the field. 



17 



What Heaven is Like 



All we know about heaven we know from the 
Bible, and we know all that we need to know. 
We know enough to fill us with happy confidence 
and exultant hopes. And all we know is upon 
the authority of the only being who ever came 
out of heaven to report to our humanity its char- 
acter and its glories, our Lord Jesus Christ. 

For one thing, the Bible assures us that in 
heaven there is room for everybody. The Jewish 
rabbis used to declare that, no matter how many 
hundreds of thousands came up to Jerusalem at 
the great feasts, the streets of the city and the 
courts of the temple were never crowded. That 
fancy is gloriously true of the New Jerusalem. 

Our entrance to this wide heaven, the Bible 
teaches, is by a narrow way. There is only one 
Door. In ancient days, when the Christians 
were fighting the invading Turks, a mother, from 
the fortress, saw her son returning from a battle, 
defeated and in swift retreat. She shut the gates 
of the fortress and called to her son from the bat- 
tlements, " You cannot enter except as con- 
queror ! " At that heroic word the son returned 
to the fray and transformed defeat into victory. 
We cannot enter heaven except as conquerors, 
yes, and "more than conquerors," in Christ 
Jesus. 

Probably the feature of heaven that is dearest 
to most hearts is its freedom from suffering and 
sorrow. Browning expressed the universal an- 
ticipation : 

18 



What Heaven is Like 

u But deep within my heart of heart there hid 
Ever the confidence, amends for all, 
That heaven repairs what wrongs earth's journey did." 

No more lame feet or aching backs in heaven ! 
No more deaf ears or near-sighted eyes or throb- 
bing heads ! All faces exquisite, all bodies strong 
and swift, all minds clear, all spirits at peace ! 
The wonder is that so many, believing this, yet 
dread the gates of death. 

But to the sinner, wearied with the long strug- 
gle against temptation, saddened by remorse even 
while he is grateful for the victories which Christ 
has won for him, there is a joy in heaven far 
superior to the absence of pain. Some little girls 
were telling their thoughts of heaven. To one it 
was a place of lovely meadows and trees ; to an- 
other, a great, golden city ; a third thought of 
the singing, and still others, of the joy and safety 
and plenty of the celestial abodes. But last of 
all spoke a thoughtful lass : i i Heaven ; why, 
heaven, I think, is just a place where you're 
never sorry." That's it exactly. 

After all descriptions of heaven, even the 
glowing visions of the Apocalypse, there is one 
thought that always means heaven to the Chris- 
tian : it is where Christ is. A little boy was 
once asked, ' ' Where is your home ? ' ' He didn' t 
know what to say, for his family had moved 
about a great deal, but he turned at last to his 
mother and leaned against her. "My home's 
where mother is, ' ' he said. If the love of Christ 
has entered our hearts, then our heavenly home 
is where He is, in the next world and in this 
world alike. 

19 



Who Lives in Your House? 



Show me a man's household, and I will show- 
yon the man ! If love dwells there, he is lovely ; 
if wisdom, he is wise ; if prosperity, he is in- 
dustrious. And if Christ dwells there, he has all 
these graces and blessings, and many more. 

The legend of Helena relates how, when in 
search of the cross on which Christ died, she 
found three crosses. How could she tell which 
was the true cross ? She took a corpse and placed 
it on the first, the second ; it remained unchanged. 
But as soon as it touched the Saviour's cross it 
started into life. 

That is the test and proof of Christ's presence 
— life, joy, beauty, power. In proportion as you 
have Christ, you have these. Christ is the silver 
lamp which, as Goethe relates, was left burning 
in the hut of the poor shepherd. And as it shone, 
it rapidly transformed the hut into a vast and 
beautiful palace. Such is the indwelling Christ. 

This jubilant consciousness of Christ's presence 
is not always at its height. As Dr. Cummings 
says : A Christian has God's daylight in his soul 
when he may not have sunlight ; that is, he has 
enough to light him, but not enough to cheer 
him. ' ' 

It should be enough for us just to know that 
Christ is with us, leaving it to Him to manifest 
Himself in whatever way is best. When they 
threatened to banish Chrysostom if he did not 
renounce his Christianity, he replied, " Thou 
canst not, for the world is my Father's house." 

20 



Who Lives in Your House ? 

When they threatened to kill him, he answered, 
"Thou canst not, for my life is hid with Christ 
in God." No one that has really entered into 
the sense of Christ's presence can be lonely or 
afraid. 

And how can we obtain this priceless com- 
panionship 1 Only ask for it ! Merely open 
our doors, and invite the Saviour in. He has 
been standing there, knocking, perhaps for many 
a year. Simply allow Him to do His will. Simply 
pray to Him : 

4 ' Be Thou my Friend, my close Companion ever ! 
Earth's paths diverge as comrades onward wend; 
Friends may depart, but Thou, oh, leave me never ! 
Be Thou my Friend. 

" Be Thou my All ! Terrors sometimes enfold me ; 
The vasts of Thy great universe appall. 
Closer to Thy dear heart, oh, closer hold me ; 
Be Thou my All !" 

Then, when we have the indwelling Christ, 
what next ? 

Let Him shine out ! 

Compton, the missionary, was on his way to 
India. In his stateroom he heard the cry, < ' Man 
overboard ! ' ' He knew he could not help if he 
went on deck, so he took his lamp, and held it 
close to his little round "bull's-eye" window. 
Soon he heard the glad cry, l c Saved ! ' ' and the 
next morning he learned that it was his light that 
accomplished the rescue. It came just at the 
right time, it fell just in the right place, it showed 
the sailors where to cast the rope, and pointed out 
the rope to the drowning man. 

Christ dwells with you, that you may find en- 
trance for Him also into some other life. 

21 



How to Get a Fresh Start 



A little girl, on New Year's morning, was 
watching her grandmother knit a stocking. i ' My 
knitting," said the wise old woman to the little 
girl, u is like the year that has just begun. See 
if you can guess how." 

1 i I know ! ' ' said the girl at last. " It' s because 
the year grows slowly, stitch by stitch." 

" That's so," answered the grandmother ; and 
then she suddenly pulled out her needles and un- 
raveled the stocking, so that the yarn lay, a ruined, 
crumpled heap, in her lap. 

" Oh, dear ! " cried the little girl. " Why did 
you do that? " 

' ' To teach you, darling, that though your life 
grows slowly, you can spoil it all in a minute. ' ' 

Grandmother's lesson was a strong one, and 
yet it was only half true j for, as Mrs. Sangster 
sings : 

" The noblest thing a year can lay 
In the lap of you and me, 
The brave young year has brought this day ; 
It is Opportunity. ' ' 

A fresh start, a chance to do better, an invitation 
to pick up the needles and knit the stocking back 
again to where it was before — that is the blessed 
gift of every new year ; and, for that matter, of 
every new day and hour. Praise God for the en- 
couragement of time ! 

Paul's comparison is such a comfort : we can 

22 



How to Get a Fresh Start 

" put off the old man," we can " put on the new 
man," we can be "renewed in the spirit." 

There is something so complete in the taking 
off of a garment. There it lies on the chair, en- 
tirely apart from us j we have absolutely nothing- 
more to do with it. If it were like getting rid by 
medicine of a blotch on the skin, which disap- 
pears gradually, some days even going back to its 
former humiliating prominence, it would be dis- 
couraging enough. But it is like shuffling off the 
skin, as a snake does, and finding a soft, fair, new 
skin underneath. 

Is Paul right? Can we get rid of our evil 
natures as easily as that? Can we assume the 
good, the true, the beautiful as easily as that ? 

Yes, Paul was right, of course. ' ' I will ; be 
thou clean" — Christ is still saying that ; and as 
He says it, in answer to man's faith-filled en- 
treaty, the horrible leprosy of sin falls away like 
a defiled garment, and the angels stand ready 
with the best robe to put it on us. 

Get Christ in your heart ! It is no more a slow 
process than for Christ to enter your front door. 

Get Christ in your heart ! There will be no 
room for evil there. His presence is transforma- 
tion. 

Get Christ in your heart ! He comes for the 
asking. An instant's sincere asking is enough. 

As to coats of cloth, the old must be taken off 
before the new is put on. As to the robe of 
Christ's righteousness, we must boldly put it on 
over our filthy rags, and it will transform them 
to fine, white linen. 

We all need the new start ; oh, how we need it ! 
For the new start is — Christ. 

23 



Bringing Others to Christ 



You are not too young to bring others to Christ. 
A missionary in India was sent for, to go into an 
obscure village and baptize seventy adult native 
converts. He was examining the candidates when 
he saw in the corner a lad of fifteen, and ques- 
tioned him. When he learned that he, too, 
wanted to join the church, the missionary urged 
him to wait till he was older, and confirmed in 
the faith. At once all the people sprang up and 
cried, " Why, sir, he is the one who taught us all 
we know about Christ ! " 

You are not too insignificant to bring others 
to Christ. A torchlight procession started with 
dark torches, which sprung into brilliance like 
magic as they passed a certain point. Going 
close, a small child was seen there, sheltered, 
smiling, with a lighted candle in his hand ! You 
can be like that child. 

You are not too ignorant to bring others to 
Christ. Eev. J. Hudson Taylor, the famous mis- 
sionary to China, illustrates this truth with a 
candle. When do you expect it to give out light? 
When it is half burned down f 'No ; as soon as 
you light it. The demoniac whom Christ healed 
wanted to remain with Christ, to learn from Him ; 
but Christ sent him away, to preach the gospel in 
ten cities. 

Begin with the person next you. A man was 
once praying for an unconverted neighbor : 
" Touch him with Thy finger, Lord!" Sud- 

24 



Bringing Others to Christ 

denly the thought canie, "Am not I God's 
finger f" He spoke to his neighbor, and won 
a soul for Christ. Spurgeon had the spirit of 
Andrew and Philip. One day a lad was show- 
ing him to a church where he was to preach. 
He asked the boy, in his great-hearted way, i ' Do 
you love my Master?" The boy stopped and 
said, "Mr. Spurgeon, for years I have shown 
ministers to the church, and not one has ever 
asked me that question." The result was a new 
life for Christ. 

Don't wait for others to ask you to bring them 
to Christ. An experienced bathing master says 
he has seen many men overcome in the water, 
and all go down without a sound or an outcry. 
It is the same with drowning souls. Christ 
would never have had that talk with the woman 
at Sychar if He had waited for her to begin it. 

Sometimes your victories will be in unexpected 
places. There is a remarkable collection of gold 
nuggets whose chief trophy is one worth $985. 
It is so enormous that when it was discovered it 
was at first tossed aside without a suspicion that 
it could be gold. You may make just such a 
spiritual discovery. 

And, finally, expect to win souls. A minister 
once came to Spurgeon and said dolefully, "I 
have been preaching for so many years, and 
hardly any have been converted." 

"Why, man alive!" exclaimed the great 
preacher, "you didn't expect that every time 
you preached a sermon somebody would be con- 
verted, did you?" 

"No, of course I didn't expect that." 

"Well, that's why they weren't converted*" 

25 



Leaning on the Lord 



Few soldiers, even among those that have seen 
the fiercest campaigning, have faced horrible 
deaths so often and so unflinchingly as the mis- 
sionary, John G. Paton. The secret of his cour- 
age is his unfaltering trust in God. "I never 
could say,' 7 Paton declares, "that on such occa- 
sions I was entirely without fear. Still, I was 
never left without hearing that promise in all 
its consoling and supporting power coming up 
through the darkness and the anguish, < Lo, I am 
with you alway.' " 

George Macdonald truly says that "to be 
trusted is a greater compliment than to be 
loved." This whole-hearted trust is the deepest 
honor we can pay Jehovah. God wants to trust 
us, and He knows that He cannot trust us unless 
we trust Him. 

Spurgeon tells how he came to repose this trust 
in God. He was carrying on his Pastors' Col- 
lege, and was reduced to the last dollar for its 
support. In this emergency a lady, whose name 
he never even knew, sent him a thousand dollars 
to use in the work. The great preacher declared, 
"I threw myself then and thenceforth upon the 
bounteous care of the Lord." 

Such a confidence in God may be gained by 
any one who will simply take God at His word. 
There is a helpful sentence in "Gold Dust" : 
"As carefully as a mother arranges a room 
where her children will pass the day, does God 

26 



Leaning on the Lord 

prepare each hour that opens before me. " The 
realization of this, through constant experience, 
is one of the most exhilarating joys of life. 

As a great ocean steamer nears a coast, the 
captain and helmsman need a minuteness of 
knowledge which they do not possess. Unknown 
dangers, hidden rocks and shoals, are all around 
them. So a pilot comes off from shore, climbs 
on board, and takes his place at the wheel. In- 
stantly the control of the ship is transferred from 
ignorance to knowledge and from incompetency 
to ability. 

Just such a transfer takes place in a life that 
is surrendered to the Infinite Pilot. He knows 
every sea, to the least shifting bar and the slight- 
est wind that blows. He will bring us to the 
desired haven. 

Our trust must be complete. The pilot must 
have supreme authority. Note what happens 
when you take a check to the bank. You go 
half way there. Do you then receive half the 
sum the check promises to pay ? No ; not a cent 
is yours till you go all the way, and put in your 
check at the teller's window. So it must be 
with those "checks on the bank of faith," the 
promises of God. Let us believe, with Frances 
Power Cobbe : 

' ' In His hands we are safe. We falter on 
Through storm and mire ; 
Above, beside, aronnd ns, there is One 
Will never tire. 

' ' What though we fall, and bruised and wounded lie, 
Our lips in dust ? 
God's arms shall lift us up to victory ! 
In Him we trust." 

27 



Fault-Seeing and Fault- 
Finding 



Nearly all discoverers, from Columbus down, 
belong to nature's noblemen. They have the 
courage to press across unknown seas, over 
Arctic ice, or through the tropical jungle. They 
have patience for long searches among the in- 
numerable stars to hit upon a new asteroid or 
comet, or among the rocks and flowers beneath 
their feet to hit upon a new plant or fossil. They 
have the persevering insight that pierces through 
complicated formulae to some wonderful secret 
of chemistry or physics. Even the gold-hunter, 
in his wild-eyed, dogged hunt among the fast- 
nesses of the mountains, has something grand 
about him. 

But the fault-finders ! those that go up and 
down the world peering into the lives of men, to 
spy out, not their nobility, but their meanness ; 
not their beauty, but their ugliness ! They are 
discoverers that rank with the pig, nosing amidst 
offal. 

A man sees what he is prepared to see and 
expects to see. When an artist travels, he sees 
Titians ; a missionary, he sees the slums and 
their possibilities ; a miser, he sees the stock 
exchanges. So in your life journey ; if you are 
a fault-finder, the world is full of faults for you 
to find, and you will find nothing else. 

The most divine thing on earth— what is it ? 
It is a mother's love for her erring boy. It is 

28 



Fault-Seeing and Fault-Finding 

the most divine because it is nearest Christ. 
She knows his faults, alas ! too well ; but she 
shuts her eyes to them, she tries to forget them, 
she believes in him in spite of them ; and if any- 
thing will save a man it is that spirit, in mothers 
and in Christ. 

Sometimes, too, — have you ever thought of it? 
— what we call a fault is part of the make-up of 
our friend, so intimately interwoven in his char- 
acter that to remove it would be to destroy his 
identity for us. He is impetuous, yes ; but that is 
a part of his warm-heartedness. He is quick- 
tempered, yes; but that goes with his honesty 
and frankness. The French phrase, " the defect 
of a quality," expresses a truth that all fault- 
finders will do well to remember. 

Some clever women can take an old dress, and 
by half a day's turning and cleaning can make 
it as good as new. Some clever men can take an 
old sofa, and with the aid of a few yards of cloth 
and some brass-headed nails, present to the 
household a brand new piece of furniture. And 
there are others, still more clever, that can make 
the best of people ! They not only see their best, 
but they get others to see it, they bring it out 
in conversation, they develop it by their loving 
sunshine. 

To be sure, we must pass judgment upon others, 
in a way. We must see their faults, or we can- 
not help them out of them. We must rightly 
estimate character, or we cannot live justly and 
prosperously. 

But there's a difference between fault-seeing 
and fault-finding — oh, all the difference in the 
world ! 

29 



Blessedness at Hand 



Some thinkers make a careful distinction 
between the words "blessedness " and "happi- 
ness." Happiness is the surface pleasure, bless- 
edness is the inner delight ; happiness flowers in 
time, blessedness is rooted in eternity ; happiness 
is consistent with worldliness, blessedness ex- 
ists only with religion. 

Whether we agree with this distinction or not, 
it is certain that Christ's thought of joy is very 
different from the world's— and Christ knows ! 
The man He counts blessed is the meek, the 
afflicted, the kind, the pure, the peaceable, the 
persecuted. The man the world counts happy 
is the aggressive, dominating, lucky, rich, and 
famous master of men and of things. They can- 
not both be right. 

Once the Duchess of Argyle wrote to several 
European monarchs and asked them who it was 
they especially envied. Most of the replies were 
in harmony with that of Francis Joseph, Em- 
peror of Austria, who said, ' ' I envy the fate of 
the man who is not an emperor." Not long ago 
William K. Yanderbilt, one of the richest men 
in the world, declared that he envied the man 
who had no wealth to care for. Yet it is to be 
observed that the emperor retains his crown, 
and Yanderbilt his millions. 

It is the business of the Christian to be happy 
"in whatsoever state," in poverty or riches, in 
lofty station or obscurity. Canon Gore declares 
that in great measure it was the cheerfulness of 

30 



Blessedness at Hand 

the early Christians that attracted and won those 
around them. This has been true of all Chris- 
tians since. 

Recognize yourself, Christian, as an advertise- 
ment of Christ ! If you are sunny in the dark- 
ness, hopeful in trouble, and cheery in affliction, 
those around you will see the evidence that Christ 
is a Joy-Giver. But if you are anxious and 
depressed, they will be likely to seek their hap- 
piness elsewhere than in your self- discredited 
religion. 

I like to think of the old Cunard captain 
whom Dr. Cuyler tells about. A passenger 
asked him, " Is it always foggy here on the banks 
of Newfoundland?" 

"How should I know, madam?" was the 
answer ; "I don' t live here. ' ' 

So says the Christian when men inquire petu- 
lantly of the fogs of life : "I don't live among 
them." 

Indeed, a true Christian has appropriated to 
himself this bit of " Uncle Eben's " philosophy : 
' l Minnit a man stops lookin' fer trouble, happi- 
ness '11 look fer him." He seeks a better coun- 
try, that is, a heavenly. He has set his affec- 
tions on things above. 

No independence is so valuable as this inde- 
pendence in regard to the source of one's happi- 
ness. Colton wisely said: "To be obliged to 
beg one's daily happiness from others bespeaks 
a more lamentable poverty than that of one who 
begs his daily bread. ' ' No blessedness but that 
of character is thus independent of circumstan- 
ces, no joy except that which is parallel with 
the eternal, unchanging, and stable joy of God. 

31 



Religion Through and 
Through 



God commanded the Jews, at the Passover 
season : " Purge your houses of leaven. Let no 
leaven be found in them." The Jews obeyed 
very thoroughly. They swept every room. 
They searched the remotest corner. They lighted 
candles and peered into dark places. Then they 
made formal declaration before God : "I have 
done what I can to remove the leaven ; if there 
be any more in the house, I curse it, and disown 
it altogether." 

Such a search for sin, uncompromising, de- 
termined, thorough, solemn, must the Christian 
make in his own heart ; and if any iniquitous 
tendencies unavoidably remain, he must disown 
them wholly and forever. 

Eeligion must be a light to the room within, 
before it can shine out of the windows. As John 
Bunyan said, l ' Eeligion is the best armor in the 
world, but the worst cloak." It is made for dis- 
closing and not for concealing, for attack and not 
for defense. 

A writer in The Sunday -School Times shrewdly 
links together Rite, Eight, and Wright. Eelig- 
ion is not a matter of Eite, but of Eight — heart- 
righteousness. Nor merely of Eight but Wright ; 
that is, not merely knowing the truth, but doing 
it, being a wright of it, a worker of it. 

"What I want," said Kingsley, "is, not to 
possess religion, but to have a religion that pos- 

32 



Religion Through and Through 

sesses me." Beecher once declared that many 
people make religion the cake of life — something 
to be put away in a cupboard and used only 
when company comes. But religion must be the 
bread of life. 

The foundation of real religion is to deal hon- 
estly with ourselves and with God. An English 
photographer once hung out a sign, "It is not 
necessary to be rich to look rich in one of our 
photographs." He kept a studio full of clothes 
a la mode, paste jewels, and other trappings of 
folly. He darkened eyebrows and eyes and re- 
moved wrinkles by a touch. 

Not such is God's photography. God sees 
not as man sees. Man looks on the outer appear- 
ance, but God looks on the heart. Henry van 
Dyke's famous rhyme is not always true of earth's 
fame, but it applies to every record of heaven : 

" Four things a man must learn to do 
If he would make his record true : 
To think without confusion clearly ; 
To love his fellowmen sincerely ; 
To act from honest motives purely ; 
To trust in God and heaven securely. " 

The great reward, if one shows before men only 
what he really is, is that he always has more and 
more to show. T. T. Lynch makes a wise re- 
mark : " He who persists in genuineness will in- 
crease in adequacy." 

And, on the other hand, nothing so belittles a 
man as the habit of hypocrisy. What actor has 
been a man of leadership and of power outside 
of the theatre ? Wear a mask, and before long — 
the mask will be empty I 

33 



Prodigals — and Fathers 



There is no such thing as a little sin. In 
Moscow once a young man stole some gold fish, 
hiding them in a tank under the floor of his room. 
From that very room, and, as it was afterward 
proved, from that very tank of decaying fish, 
sprung a fearful plague, which desolated the city 
and country, and left the young man himself a 
blind and suffering cripple. There is no little 
sin, and if you sin at all you are a prodigal son, 
and the parable applies to you. 

For sinning is departure from the Father's 
house. Every sinner lives in a far country. 
Every one who spends his substance, his money, 
time, or talents, in ways which God would not 
approve, spends it in "riotous living." He 
feeds swine ; for the world, on which he spends 
his money, has no more care for him than pigs 
for the one who supplies their wants. And there 
is always "a famine in that land," a famine of 
peace, of true happiness, of power, of soul food. 

" Bepentance," says Dr. Conwell, " is the 
greatest deed that can be done on earth." 

i l What is repentance ? ' ' asked a Sunday- 
school superintendent ; and a little girl wisely 
answered, "It is being sorry enough to quit." 
Not being sorry, but being sorry enough to quit. 

It cannot come too soon, if you are sinning. 
Said old Thomas Fuller, "You cannot repent too 
soon, because you do not know how soon it may 
be too late." Another good reason is given by 

34 



Prodigals — and Fathers 

Mason : "If we put off repentance another day, 
we have a day more to repent of, and a day less 
to repent in." 

So it comes about that repentance may be put 
off so long that it is impossible. God will not 
make puppets of us. He will not force repent- 
ance upon any man. He is always ready to for- 
give, but men may so harden their hearts that 
they can no longer desire forgiveness. 

Whenever forgiveness is honestly asked, how- 
ever, we may be sure God quickly and freely 
grants it. Henry II. was besieging his rebellious 
son, when the prince sent for his father. He was 
sick and wanted to confess his wrong-doing, but 
the king sternly refused to go to him. " Take 
me from my bed," cried the dying prince, " and 
let me die in sackcloth and ashes in sorrow for 
my sin against my father." When the king 
heard of this, too late, he moaned, " Would God 
I had died for him ! " 

This could never happen with God. Like the 
father in the lovely parable, He sees the return- 
ing prodigal while he is a great way off, runs, 
falls on his neck, and kisses him. Like the 
shepherd in another parable still more forcible, 
He leaves the ninety and nine safe sheep, and 
wanders in the dark over crag and marshland, 
till He has found the sheep that was lost. 

1 ' Lord, do thus much for me and all ; 
And, when we stray 
From Thy good way, 
Oh, fetch us home at evenfall ! " 



35 



Some Sycomore Fruits 



Zacch jeus turned his defect into his advantage. 
A little man, he climbed the tree and so became 
taller than any six-footer in the crowd. We may 
all do the same. " If your sword is short, add a 
step thereto. 77 If your intellect is dull, study 
harder. If spiritual graces are difficult for you 
to attain, pray the more zealously. 

Zacchseus did not hesitate on the score of dig- 
nity. He did not wait for a chance to look down 
from some house-top or stone wall. He wanted 
to see Jesus, and there was a sycomore tree handy, 
so up he went. It is that kind of man still that 
sees Jesus, the man that uses the first available 
means to come close to him — a revival, a private 
conversation, a book, a prayer, a Salvation Army 
meeting. 

Zacchseus was not obliged to speak to Christ ; 
the Saviour spoke to him. Zacchaeus never 
dreamed of inviting Jesus to his house ; Jesus in- 
vited Himself. No man needs to take the first 
step toward Christ, for our Lord has taken many 
steps toward us, has gone more than half-way to 
meet us. 

Zacchseus was not worrying about men's opin- 
ion of him, though they sneered, " Jesus is dining 
with a sinner! 77 He cared a great deal, how- 
ever, about Christ 7 s opinion of him. It is Christ 7 s 
opinion of us that all men and angels will hold in 
the end. 

Zaccha^us received Christ joyfully. We may 

36 



Some Sycomore Fruits 

be sure the best cloth was laid, the best dishes 
were set out, with the best food upou them. It 
would cost somethiug. Iudeed, it cost more thau 
half of all his goods before he was through with 
it. It always costs to receive Christ. It costs ; 
but oh, how royally it pays ! 

Zacchseus did not take Jesus into a side room 
and whisper his confession into the Master's ear. 
He stood up boldly, and proclaimed it before the 
room full, and the windows and doors full. When 
one really is ready to confess his sins before Al- 
mighty God, it is easy to confess them before petty 
men. It may not be best or required, but it is 
easy. 

Zacchseus knew it was not enough to just say 
he was sorry. He showed heart repentance by 
purse repentance. He brought forth fruit meet 
for repentance. Indeed, he did not say he was 
sorry at all — in words ; but he made a good con- 
fession just the same. 

Zacchseus probably did not think that even 
half his goods to the poor and a fourfold restitu- 
tion could catch up with his wrong-doing. You 
never can catch up with wrong-doing — with 
broken hearts, with ruined lives. But he did the 
best he could, and Christ always accepts that. 

Zacchseus got for his reward just one word : 
i l Saved ! J ? But that word was spoken by the one 
being in the universe that could speak it with 
authority. And it meant an eteruity of peace, of 
power, of purity, of bliss. Surely, with all his 
bargaining, Zacchseus had never before made a 
bargain comparable to that ! 



37 



The Lad With the Lunch 



It is said that once the great musical conductor, 
Sir Michael Costa, was leading a rehearsal. There 
was a multitude of players, and off in a far corner 
a man with a piccolo. Said the man to himself, 
' * With all this tumult of organs and drums and 
trumpets and cymbals, it makes no difference 
what I do," so he stopped. Immediately Costa 
threw up his hands and ordered silence. ' l Where 
is the piccolo % " he cried. 

Ah, the child may have only a small part to 
play in the great world-orchestra, but the Con- 
ductor has a quick ear. He misses the least note 
that should be in the music, and is not. May we 
not believe that the great miracle of the loaves 
and fishes would have been spoiled for the Master 
if that small boy had not cheerfully given up his 
meagre lunch ? 

But we must not be too sure that the child's 
part is small. Certainly it was not a small part 
in that miracle. When Hell Gate was blown up, 
and that formidable obstruction to New York's 
commerce was in an instant removed, that instant 
represented not only the work of hundreds of 
strong men for many months, but also the touch 
of a little child's finger upon an electric key. 
Not seldom is a child found at the electric focus 
of life, ready and able to set in motion forces in- 
finitely stronger than itself is. 

That is one reason why the right training of a 
child is such a great thing. A lovely story is 
told of a woman nearly a century old, who lay 

38 



The Lad With the Lunch 

dying, and as she lay there she kept asking, ' ' Is 
it dark ? " " Yes, Janet, it is midnight. " " Are 
all the children inV 1 Years ago her children, 
grown up, had preceded her to the spirit world, 
but she imagined them back again, and died with 
the question of motherhood upon her lips. 

Ah, yes! "Are all the children in?" That 
is the question of questions ; for if the children 
are brought into the fold, it will speedily be well 
with the whole round earth. As Jean Ingelow 
wrote : 

11 Far better in its place the lowliest bird 

Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song, 
Than that a seraph strayed should take the word 
And sing His glory wrong. ' ' 

Yet, after all, the lad with the loaves and fishes 
did a little thing ; he only gave away (perhaps 
sold — who knows ?) the lunch that his mother had 
given him and his father had earned ; and he got 
it back again in a few minutes. The great thing 
was done by our Lord in taking the child' s little 
deed and magnifying it to cover the needs of five 
thousand persons. 

That is only a token — writ large for all ages to 
note it — of how Christ is always ready to magnify 
our small deeds of obedience and self-sacrifice. 
His are the Midas fingers that turn all our dross 
to gold. Through all his life that boy must have 
rejoiced : "It was my lunch the Master used that 
glorious day ! " And he is rejoicing over it even 
now, I hope, in heaven. 

How many such joys are we preparing for our- 
selves as the days go by % 

39 



Power and Prayer 



That prayer means power in national affairs 
has been proved many times, but probably never 
more remarkably than in the case of Abraham 
Lincoln. It came out when the President visited 
General Sickles, as he lay wounded after the battle 
of Gettysburg. 

"What were you thinking of while we were 
fighting up there % ' ' Sickles asked. 

" Oh, I wasn't much concerned about you ! " 
Jjincoln replied j and then he went on to explain 
solemnly how at the height of the campaign, 
as he was wrestling with God on his knees 
for victory, there had come to him the sweet 
comfort that it was all to result favorably, as it 
did. The great President had the same assurance 
given him regarding Vicksburg, before that crucial 
battle was won. 

Time and again, in the large affairs of missions, 
prayer has been proved to mean power. A classic 
instance is that crisis in the Telugu field of India 
when Dr. Clough was threatened by the indig- 
nant high castes with the loss of their support if 
he received into his mission school some low-caste 
applicants. Dr. Clough and his wife, praying 
over the matter in different rooms, were simul- 
taneously led by God to open to 1 Cor. 1 : 26-29, 
" God hath chosen the weak things of the world," 
etc. They received the low castes, lost all their 
other scholars, and speedily came the greatest 
revival since Pentecost, and a church of 30,000 
communicants. 

40 



Power and Prayer 

That prayer means power in money affairs is 
abundantly proved by the experience of George 
Miiller and his successor in the management of 
his great orphanages. He made vast plans, re- 
quiring an annual expenditure of $230,000. He 
never went into debt. He had not a cent of 
assured income. And yet his orphans never went 
hungry to bed. He reckoned some 30,000 direct 
and wonderful answers to prayers received on the 
very day of his asking. He never made a request 
of man, but he received in this way of private 
prayer more than four million dollars to carry on 
his vast undertakings. William T. Stead con- 
siders George Miiller 7 s life to be a triumphant 
scientific proof of prayer. 

Prayer means power in sickness. It is a 
famous story how Luther, visiting Melanchthon 
when the latter was to all appearances dying, 
prayed him back to life again by more than an 
hour of strong pleading with God. * ' Dear Luther, 
why don't you let me depart in peace % ' ' cried the 
suffering Melanchthon. ' ' We can' t spare you yet, 
Philip, ' ' was his friend' s reply ; and Melanchthon, 
given back, as Luther firmly believed, in answer 
to his prayers, labored for years afterward in the 
cause of the Protestant Reformation. We are to 
use in sickness all the means that God gives us, 
such as medicine and surgery ; but prayer is also 
a means, powerful and never to be omitted. 

In short, let us never forget that, as Phillips 
Brooks so wisely said, " Prayer is not the con- 
quering of God's reluctance, but the taking hold 
of God's willingness." That is why there is 
power in it — because there is all power in God, 
and all willingness to bestow upon man. 

41 



Trials and Triumphs 



John Newton once quaintly compared the 
trials we must bear during a year to a great 
bundle of sticks, far too heavy to carry. But 
God knows that, and gives them to us one at a 
time ; only, there are many foolish persons that 
insist on carrying yesterday's stick over again 
with to-day's, and adding to-morrow's also to the 
load ! 

" Only a day at a time ! There never may be a to-morrow : 
Only a day at a time, and that we can live, we know ; 
The trouble we cannot bear is only the trouble we borrow, 
And the trials which never come are the ones which fret 
us so. ' ' 

Many of our anticipated and dreaded trials, 
when we come up to them in God's time, prove 
not to be trials at all, but blessings. They are 
like a certain picture, which, from a distance, 
seems to be a skull, but as you draw nearer, you 
see that it is a throng of cherub faces. The Chris- 
tian, knowing God's loving kindness, expects such 
transformations all the time. 

Then, when the real trials come, the Christian 
knows that they are for the best, and this knowl- 
edge takes all the hardship out of them. It is 
like the monks' peas. Two monks were bidden, 
as penance, to make a long journey with their 
shoes and stockings full of peas. One soon be- 
came weary and sore, and hobbled painfully, 
while the other walked the whole way briskly 
and comfortably. When pressed for a reason for 

42 



Trials and Triumphs 

the difference, the shrewd monk said, " Why, 
before I started out, I boiled my peas." It is this 
trustful submission to God's will that in like 
manner softens the Christian's hardships. 

Andrew Murray has a pleasant parable. He 
pictures a woman in South Africa whose husband 
has gone on a long and dangerous journey into 
the interior. One day a gigantic, ugly, black 
Kaffir stands in her doorway. She shrinks back 
in terror. But he hands out, smiling, a letter 
from the absent dear one, telling her that all is 
well with him. Then she feasts the Kaffir in her 
joy, and when he comes the next time, she rushes 
out eagerly to meet him. So it will be with all 
our blackest trials when we recognize them as 
messengers of our Lord. 

But it is better even than that, for our Lord 
Himself will help us bear every trial. As Beecher 
says, ' ' An unhelped cross is the heaviest thing a 
man ever carried ; but a Christ-touched cross is 
about the lightest thing a man ever carried." 
1 1 Take my yoke upon you, ' ' says the Saviour ; 
but the yoke, we must never forget, is a con- 
trivance by which two can draw a load together. 
Christ never asks us to bear a burden that He is 
not ready to share, and to carry the heavier end. 

The trouble often is that we won't let Him help 
us. There is a tract called " Hannah's Faith" 
that tells of a poor woman with many sorrows, 
who was amazingly cheerful under them all. 
"You must take your troubles to the Lord," a 
visitor said one day. "I do more than that," 
answered Hannah j " I leave them there. ' ' Most 
of us carry them away again. 

43 



Getting Ready for Heaven 



In the first place, we need to remember that 
heaven is onr home, and not this earth. Those 
that are most familiar with the migratory birds 
declare that their sole business in the northern 
latitudes seems to be the rearing of a family. As 
soon as the young birds can fly, the parents turn 
their thoughts southward again, to the dear, 
warm, sunny home-land. Thus, to the Christian, 
earth seems only his nesting place, where he 
forms his character, and strengthens its wings 
for a flight to the better country beyond the cold 
and the storms. 

Such thoughts of heaven as often come to the 
Christian fill his life with joyful anticipations. 
We are like the old woman in the poor-house, 
whom the minister found with a face quite radiant 
with delight. When asked the cause of her joy, 
she answered: "Oh, sir, I was just thinking 
what a change it will be from the poor-house to 
heaven!" It will, indeed, be a blessed change, 
and the thought may well fill us with rapture in 
the midst of earth's greatest trials. 

It is well that only the outlines of heaven are 
shown us : the full reality would cause us to lose 
our hold on earth and its duties. A traveler 
relates how, on returning to France from India, 
the sailors of his ship became quite incapable of 
performing their tasks. They gazed longingly 
at the approaching shores, they put on their best 
clothes, some talked volubly, others wept. They 

44 



Getting Ready for Heaven 

had to obtain, according, indeed, to the custom 
of the port, another set of sailors to bring the 
ship to shore. So it would be with us, could 
we see more distinctly the enchanting shores of 
heaven ! 

But, none the less, we are very foolish if we do 
not get ready for heaven, if we forget it, if we 
do not in some way relate all our living to this 
great and permanent change that is sure to come. 
" Heaven," said Beecher, "to be a place of hap- 
piness, must be a place of activity." We can 
prepare for heaven, then, by accustoming our- 
selves to heavenly activities. And what are 
they? 

First, friendships. Are the associations in 
which we most delight those with the meek, 
the holy, the loving, the faithful, whose is sure 
to be the Kingdom of Heaven? Then we are 
preparing ourselves for the companionships of 
heaven. 

Next, ambitions. Are our hopes, our aims, 
our strivings, centred on wealth or luxury or 
worldly fame ? These all pass away like a breath, 
even if we gain them. Only one ambition has 
issue in heaven, the ambition to win God's ap- 
proval. That is the permanent riches, and ease, 
and fame. 

Then, employments. We do not know just 
what we are to do in heaven, but we know that 
we may best prepare ourselves for our work 
there by doing the work here that God picks out 
for us — and no other work. And if, in humble 
dependence on God's leading, we do that work, 
He will bring us into the happy work of heaven. 

45 



The Light of the World 



The discovery of the X-ray has shown us how 
little we have known of that wonderful substance, 
the ether, and how little we yet know. When 
Christ is called the Light of the world, He is 
compared to one of the greatest wonders in the 
universe, a marvel that grows with every year 
more surprising, just as the world is continually 
seeing more and more of beauty and wisdom in 
the life of our Lord. 

As the X-ray pierces through solid substances 
and discloses what is within, so that our flesh is 
transparent to it and only our bones cast a shadow, 
so Christ can pierce to the deep things of the 
heart, and everything is naked and open to His 
eye. 

But light goes nowhere except to heal, and the 
X-ray, with its strange penetrative power, is 
proving itself a mighty curative agent, conquer- 
ing lurking diseases that for all ages have baffled 
the physician. So also Christ, though He, the 
Word, is sharper than any two-edged sword and 
pierces even to the joints and marrow, yet He 
thrusts with healing and pierces with peace. 

Light is everywhere. Water is nearly as com- 
mon, but there are desert places where the earth 
is dry. Even there, however, probably there 
more brightly than elsewhere, falls the light. 
And it is thus with the Light of the world. 
There is no desert among men, however barren 
the soul and frightful in its desolation, but the 

46 



The Light of the World 

beautiful Christ is there — rays as direct from the 
Sun of righteousness as any that fall on the saint. 

Light is compound. It has all colors in it. It 
has heat rays to warm, and chemical rays to 
vivify. It has many other powers that we are 
only beginning to learn. We have translated 
only a stanza of its ode. And Christ also is 
manifold. The Deity a trinity ! — what marvel 
that He is not a thousand trinities ! Whatever 
the pure heart desires, it finds in Christ. And 
every desire fulfilled awakens us to a new long- 
ing, which also is satisfied, and so on endlessly. 
There is no finis to the romance of Christ. 

Let the Light of the world illumine our hearts, 
and we shall not care whether it is dark or sun- 
shiny without, nor whether it is wealth or poverty 
within. Let us look for that light, and not for 
the fitful gleam of fortune. Let us accustom our 
eyes to the glory of it, preparing for that realm 
where "the Lamb is the light thereof." And 
let us all pray with the poet : 

"Dark and perplexed the way, 
Hard and involved the right ; 
The smoke of passion clonds the day, — 
O Christ, be Thou my Light ! 

" Incarnate truth Thou art, 

Of life the source and might ; 
Renew Thyself within my heart, 
O Christ, my Life and Light ! 



a 



So in Thy willing strength 

Abounding let me live ; 
Then to Thy cloudless land at length 

Abundant entrance give." 



47 



Doing His Will 



It was a little crossing-sweeper, cold and rag- 
ged. A gentleman came np and gave him some 
money and then said, " I hope, my boy, you love 
the Lord Jesus." 

The boy smiled happily. " Indeed, I do, sir," 
he said. 

"And how do you know that you do?" the 
man went on to ask. 

The answer was a beautiful one : " Because I 
always do what He tells me." 

Ah, that is the secret of discipleship ! We are 
His friends, if we do whatsoever He commands 
us. We are not His friends but His enemies, no 
matter how loud are our protestations of friend- 
ship, if we merely do our own will and go our 
own way. 

It is impossible to be too lowly in this obedi- 
ence, too eager to please our Lord. The old- 
time slave became such by allowing his ear to be 
bored to his master' s door-post. He thus became 
a part of his master's estate, to be done with as 
his master chose. That is the comparison which 
Paul gladly adopted ; he was the u bond slave" 
of Jesus Christ. No valet ; no gentleman serv- 
ant ; no private secretary ; no minister and am- 
bassador ; no viceroy. He was just the humblest 
kind of slave. 

Ah, has the awl passed through our pride, our 
self-will, our personal ambition ? Have we given 
ourselves, all that we are and hope to be, in ab- 
solute surrender to Christ % Though the slavery 

48 



Doing His Will 

hurt, though the blood flowed, though the pierced 
flesh shrank, have we yielded ourselves utterly 
to our rightful Lord $ 

If we have, theu aud not till then have we en- 
tered into the loftiest happiness and honor of the 
universe, becoming one with the Lord of the uni- 
verse. For is not He the Door f 

Does this seem to you mystical, unreal, this 
talk of union with Christ? It is, in its actual 
working out as millions of Christians are work- 
ing it out, the most practical thing in the world. 

It means that you will seek in every way to 
get intimations of Christ's will, that this mind 
may be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. 
It means, in other words, that you will pray and 
read the Bible constantly. "What would you 
think of the obedience of a soldier that did not 
listen to the word of command ? of a general that 
did not read the message of his commander-in- 
chief? 

And then, as we obey the first bit of Christ's 
will that is disclosed to us, in that act we have a 
revelation of more of His will. As we obey that, 
we learn more, and so on endlessly. You have 
never heard an obedient Christian complaining 
that he could not find out just what Christ wanted 
him to do. 

All sensible men admit the convincing force of 
the argument from experience. I make this pos- 
itive and emphatic assertion, that every man 
among all the millions of Christians would tell 
you that all his happiness in life has come from 
doing the will of Christ, and all his misery from 
failing to do that will. Is this a testimony that 
you can afford to neglect f 

49 



A Grist for Gratitude 



Every one should know at least one natural 
science, for the help it will give him toward 
knowing God. Of course it is possible for an as- 
tronomer, for instance, to be an atheist, in spite 
of the famous saying, " An undevout astron- 
omer is mad" ; and yet, if one has in his heart 
the desire to know God, some knowledge of ' ' the 
height of heaven," of the planetary and stellar 
wonderland, will grandly impress upon one the 
majesty of the Creator, and His power and wis- 
tloin. 

What astronomy does for vast stretches of 
space, geology does for vast stretches of time, 
disclosing here also the infinite God ; and what 
both of these do for the greatnesses of the universe, 
chemistry and botany will do for its littlenesses, 
and will disclose in a drop of dew as surprising 
marvels of design as the firmament can exhibit. 

God's works are to be seen also in the world of 
men. A knowledge of history will help one to 
know God quite as much as a knowledge of 
science. There is hardly a copy of a daily paper 
but gives evidence of God's overruling and di- 
recting providence. The progress of missions, 
more striking during the past year than ever be- 
fore, is a continual testimony to our Father's 
goodness and power. 

And God is to be seen and His works are to be 
recognized not only in the world without but in 
the world within. If you would be grateful to 

50 



A Grist for Gratitude 

God, know yourself and your sin, and the pun- 
ishment you merit ; then note how the merciful 
Father has blessed you. Pray much, and ex- 
perience God's wonderful works in answer to 
prayer. Enjoy the Bible, and find in every page 
a spiritual heaven more crowded with stars than 
the Milky Way. 

The future also is a part of the wonderful 
works of God. Our thanksgiving will indeed 
fall far below its possibilities if it lives only in 
the past. The finest material for gratitude lies 
in the promises of God, even before they can be 
fulfilled in your experience ; for you know they 
will be fulfilled. To the eye of faith every 
promise is as actual as an event or a substance. 

Do not save your thanksgiving for the large 
things of life. If you are not grateful for your 
little blessings as they come along, you will not 
be grateful for the large blessings when they ar- 
rive. With God there is no large or small, nor 
should there be a large or small in our relations 
with God. That is, whatever God does for us is 
great, and deserves great praise. It is as vast a 
wonder for the Infinite to think of us in the mat- 
ter of a grass-blade as of the Gulf Stream. 

And finally, do not save your thanksgiving for 
the annual festival, or for any other one day. 
Establish a custom of gratitude. Get into the 
habit of praise. You have no idea how it will 
brighten your life, and invigorate your purposes, 
arid fill your whole heart with the love of Him 
who " giveth us all things richly to enjoy." 



51 



Prayer That Obtains 



I have a new theory about prayer. You 
won't believe the theory, but it is true ; and 
here is the way I argue : 

My baby cannot talk ; she can only cry, and 
hold out her arms. She cannot tell me what she 
wants, and often she does not know. It is no 
small part of her mother's business to find out 
what she wants, and get it for her, if it will not 
hurt her. 

Now I do not believe that any one, not even a 
mother, is kinder than God, who made mothers. 
I believe that God does not wait for us to ask 
Him for what we want, since often we have not 
the words ; nor even to know what we want, 
since often all we know is that we are not satis- 
fied, or happy. I believe that God is always 
thinking, patiently thinking, brooding over our 
possible desires, that He may discover them, 
and fulfil them. 

"I also believe that," you say, indignant that 
I have called this a new theory. 

]STo, you do not. If you did, your whole life 
would be changed. 

You would stop worrying, since worry is only 
an unrecognized fear that God has forgotten you. 

You would stop envying and coveting, for you 
would know that God is devising the best for 
you, and nothing is better than the best. 

You would cease to be impatient, sure that 

52 



Prayer That Obtains 

God's eagerness will not permit a second's un- 
necessary postponement. 

You would be more earnest, realizing how close 
a partner in your business God has made 
Himself. 

Your life would move serenely, steadfastly, 
confidently, if you really believed that God was 
making your happiness His engrossing aim. 
Your life would be an unending, joyous prayer. 

I do not mean that you should make a parade 
of prayer. I believe with the old lady who said, 
' ' There are some things fit to be done in religion 
that ain't fit exactly to be talked about ; and 
prayer is one." But if you really pray, you 
can't keep it from talking. Your lips will sing 
it, and your eyes will shine it, and your whole 
being will radiate it forth. 

Will you not make trial of it ? Will you not 
press into its golden mysteries as zealously as 
miners have pressed into the Klondike ? It will 
not be long before you will realize what Trench 
so nobly describes : 

" Lord, what a change within us one short hoar, 
Spent in Thy presence, will prevail to make ! 
What heavy burdens from our bosoms take ! 
What parched ground refresh as with a shower ! 
We kneel, and all around us seems to lower ; 
We rise, and all the distant and the near 
Stand forth in sunny outline, brave and clear. 
We kneel, how weak ! we rise, how full of power 
Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, 
Or others, that we are not always strong ; 
That we are ever overborne with care ; 
That we should ever weak or heartless be, 
Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, 
And joy and strength and courage are with Thee ? ' ' 

53 



In the Far Country 



What is a prodigal son, any way ? It is not 
one who goes into a far country merely, for our 
soldier boys across the Pacific are not prodigals. 
Nor does the foolish spending of money make 
him a prodigal, for he might do that at home. 
No 5 a prodigal is one who prefers a selfish life 
to a life of love. 

Love is the home-land — self-denial and self- 
giving ; and self-seeking is the far country. If 
men are dear to you and God is dear to you, go 
to the antipodes and you will be at home. If 
you are a great sponge, seeking only to tickle 
your palate or your passions, satisfy your avarice 
or your ambitions, you are in the far country, 
though you do not step beyond your front gate. 

Alas for the drunken wretch, blear-eyed and 
heavy-hearted, lashing his passion with an ever 
more beastly licentiousness, a pauper in purse, 
in honor, and in hope ! But alas, also, for the 
man whose brain may never have been fired by 
lust or liquor, whose nerves are cool and calcu- 
lating, whose bank account is awe-inspiring, but 
he sneers at philanthropy, degrades friendship 
with policy, is feared by his children, and 
dreaded by his wife. The currents of both men 
set inward, the difference being that the second 
is an arctic current, the first a gulf stream. 

It is the easiest thing in the world for people 
to get into the far country. To say nothing of 
the bent of their nature, all the bent of the 
world and the times is thitherward. 

54 



In the Far Country 

"Prepare!" the world cries to us; and it 
means, "Get ready to throttle your compet- 
itor!" 

"Plan large things!" cries the world; and 
it means, "Plan to get more than your neigh- 
bors ! " 

' ' Succeed ! ' ' shouts the world ; and it means, 
' ' Find your life ! Be sure not to lose it ! " 

A blind guide is the world, but it can lead 
straight to the far country. 

"Mortify the flesh!" "Buffet the body!" 
' ' Be crucified with Christ ! ' ' That is the only 
way to escape the far country. Give, until you 
get an appetite for giving. Prefer others to 
yourself, until humility becomes your crown. 
Follow Christ, until to follow aught else in the 
world would seem an unutterable loss and deso- 
lation. This is the only insurance against the 
far country. Do not think to have both the 
riotous living and the father, or to compromise 
between the harlot and the home. You cannot 
serve God and mammon. Do not hope for any- 
thing, do not seek for anything, save the 
Father's complete authority, the Father's ex- 
haustless love. 

O for lives that will stay at home with the 
Father ! The workshop is there, and the vine- 
yard, but there are the full barns and the 
harvest home, the Father's upholding and the 
Father's praise. 

' ' Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest 
Home-keeping hearts are happiest, 
For those that wander they know not where 
Are full of trouble and full of care ; 
To stay at home is best." 

55 



Go! 



The first two letters of " gospel " spell "go" ! 

Christianity is the only possession that fills men 
with a passion for sharing it. The scientist does 
not of necessity become a teacher, nor the million- 
aire a philanthropist, nor the Samson a bearer of 
burdens ; but the Christian does of necessity be- 
come a missionary. He is of the light, which 
cannot help radiating forth. He is of the heat, 
which by its very nature must send out warmth. 

Be sure of this, that in proportion as you are 
careless whether men are Christian, you are not a 
Christian. Be sure of this, that in proportion as 
you are willing to go forth for Christ, Christ has 
really come to you. 

There are so many errands on which Christians 
need to be sent ! " Go," says Christ ; u minister 
cheer to the gloomy, faith to the skeptic, sym- 
pathy to the sorrowing, and money to the poor. 
Go to the prisons, and sick rooms, and slums. 
Do not neglect the nurseries. Go into the high- 
ways and hedges, the frontiers, the dark conti- 
nents. Ah, who will go on my errands?" asks 
the King. 

And if it were the King of England, millions 
of men would leap to do his slightest bidding. A 
man counts himself forever ennobled whom he has 
sent on an errand. But there are peerage rolls in 
heaven, too, and the patent of nobility reads, 
1 i Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of 
these my brethren." 

The great present need of the Christian church 

56 



Go! 

is to rise to Christ's thought of the kingdom of 
heaven. Your church is a principality, held in 
fief. Let us not cheat in the taxes. Say : ' ' Lord, 
here is my money." Nor shrink from military 
service. Say : ' ' Lord, here are my abilities, my 
time, my self. Do you need an envoy, a soldier, 
a sacrifice ? Send me ! " 

But such words will be a mockery if we are not 
willing to give at least a tenth of our income and 
a seventh of our time 5 if we are not willing to k 1 
our business suffer, if need be, that the King's 
business may be promoted ; if we are not willing 
to let many pleasant things go, in order that this 
supreme joy, the Kingdom, may come. 

Christians, in general, are not doing this. 
They are not saying, 1 1 Send me ! ' ' but ' l Send the 
other fellow ! ' ' They are not saying, ' ' Take my 
money," but they are singing what they would do 
"were the whole realm of nature" theirs. No 
wonder that Jessup, the missionary, parodied 

I i Tell it out among the heathen ' ' thus : 

II Tell it not among the heathen, that the ship is on a reef ; 
It -was freighted with salvation — our ' Captain, ' Lord and 

Chief. 
Bnt the tide at length receded, and left it high and dry — 
The tide of gold and silver, the gifts of low and high. 
The eagles and the dollars, the nickels and the dimes, 
Flowed off in other channels, from the hardness of the 

times. ' ' 

I believe that a better, a truer time is coming. 
Let us not delay that time by our sluggishness, or 
indifference, or procrastination. Let us pray, 
with our brains, our pocket-books, our time, and 
our energies, " Thy kingdom come." 

57 



When We Have Repented 



A great deal of so-called penitence is being 
sorry for the pain. Not a little of so-called let- 
ting go of sin is coupled with the intention of 
keeping as close to it as one may with safety. 
Much of so-called confession is merely a statement 
of extenuating circumstances. Oh, how we pal- 
ter with sin, as if it were an indigestion, to be 
cured with a pill, and not a poison, gnawing and 
fatal ! 

Test your repentance by your hatred of the sin. 
Does your whole being loathe it ? Do you want 
to get as far from it as possible t Do you utterly 
renounce all the associations connected with it 
and leading up to it ! If you were all alone in 
the world, and there were no hereafter and no 
God, would you still be at enmity with the sin 1 
Then you have truly repented. 

And those who are thus hating their sin and 
struggling against it, even though they may fall 
under the temptation daily, have no right but 
to believe that God is forgiving them daily. A 
sinner may do many bad things, but, for himself, 
the worst of all is to give up himself. If you hon- 
estly hate your sin, though you sin a thousand 
times more, never dare surrender hope for your- 
self, for that is to deny God's promises and to 
slander God's character. 

Yes, for He who is to accept our repentance 
will help us to repent. No lamb can in his own 
strength shake the wolf from his throat. Christ 
is the Good Shepherd ; His " rod and staff" will 

58 



When We Have Repented 

beat the wolf away. No man can tear from his 
own body a cancerous growth. Christ is the Good 
Physician, with the merciful surgeon's knife. 
Much of our struggle with sin is as if men should 
try with their puny hands to squeeze the water 
out of all the mud in the world ; but Christ, the 
Sun of Bighteousness, can make it firm, sweet 
land by a few hours' shining. With Christ we 
are more than conquerors. Where sin abounds, 
grace much more abounds. It is no stingy, doled - 
out aid ; it is ample, eager, superabundant. 

This truth is hard to believe. A man who had 
done much evil, but had bitterly repented, came 
to stand before God. 

" O God," said he, "trusting in Christ, I bring 
before you my many sins. I have been miserly, 

and » 

" Enough ; I know them all." 

"I have been cruel to my wife " 

' ' Angels, prepare his heavenly abiding place. ' J 
" I have coupled Thy name with fearful oaths." 
"Bring hither, angels, a golden harp." 
"I have boasted of the name of infidel." 
"Angels, give him the stone with the new 
name written." 

1 i I have befouled my garments in the mire of 
every sin." 

"Put on him the wedding garment, white and 
glistening. ' ' 

"I have thrown my pearls to swine, and then 
begged for the husks they ate." 

"Enter, through the gates of pearl, into the 
heavenly city." 

Thus marvelous, thus exuberant, is God's for- 
giveness of a repentant sinner. 

59 



Bible Failures 



The Bible paints many pictures of men that 
failed, and we may learn many lessons from their 
lives. 

From Cain we may learn how jealousy leads to 
failure. One of the most important factors of suc- 
cess, either worldly or spiritual, is the ability to 
rejoice heartily in the successes of others, and 
learn from them. 

Samson teaches us what deplorable failure 
comes from living for one's lower nature and neg- 
lecting the higher. With his superb physical 
nature he failed to cultivate his soul, and so he 
came to grief also physically. 

From Eli we learn how closely our failure or 
success is interwoven with the failure or success 
of all those for whom God has made us responsi- 
ble. Eli failed because his sons failed, largely 
through his fault. 

Saul's failure was caused by self-will. He was 
eager to succeed, but in his own way and not in 
God's way ; and that attitude always means failure. 

The Bible gives many other instances of failure. 

There was Absalom, his father's joy, sure of 
the throne, who lost both it and his life by his 
self-seeking ambition. 

There were Ahab and Jezebel, whose lives were 
tragic failures because of their selfishness and 
cruelty ; and Belshazzar, who lost his kingdom 
through intemperance ; and Herod and Pilate, 
pilloried forever because they knew the right and 

60 



Bible Failures 

were too weak to do it ; and Judas, most lamenta- 
ble failure of all the ages, who fell through covet- 
ousness, which is idolatry. 

The Bible is a terrible book, its pages are so 
filled with these mercilessly frank pictures of sin 
and disaster, these fearful warnings held up be- 
fore each one of us. 

But it is also the most exhilarating and com- 
forting of books, and very largely because its 
heroes, men and women, are almost all of them 
men and women who failed as the world counts 
failure, but in spite of that, and often because of 
that, achieved the most splendid and permanent 
success. 

Such was Moses, who died on the very border 
of the promised land, without seeing a single tan- 
gible result of his life work ; but all Christendom 
reveres him as the greatest man of human history, 
the founder of his nation and of the world's law. 

Such were Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and nearly 
all of Israel's prophets, men without honor in 
their own countries, preachers of despised truths, 
livers of sad lives ; but their writings are the 
backbone of the world to-day. 

Such were John the Baptist, Stephen and James, 
the proto -martyrs. Such was Paul, imprisoned, 
beaten, stoned, beheaded. Such was our Lord 
Himself, a crucified convict. Oh, who would not 
deem it an eternal crown to be in such company ? 

For success is to be like Christ, and to do His 
blessed will. 

And failure is to be unlike Christ, and to dis- 
obey Him. 

And there is no other failure, and there is no 
other success. 

61 



All We Need to Know 
about the Future 



Sir Walter Baleigh, the night before he 
died, wrote these lines, which were engraved on 
his tombstone : 

1 ' But from the earth, this grave, this dust, 
The Lord will raise me up, I trust." 

This is trne, so far as it goes ; bnt he might have 
gone much farther. For the Christian need not 
trust, he should know. Immortality should not 
be to him a faith, but an experience. 

Before Christ came, men could only guess it. 
They could only rejoice in such " Intimations of 
Immortality" as Wordsworth recounts in his fa- 
mous ode. Ingalls, the Western statesman, once 
described in a powerful address the responses to 
desires and instincts throughout nature. The 
young bird starts from the icy north for some 
region it never saw but feels moved to reach, and 
finds the sunny south. The fish of the tropic 
gulfs have a mysterious longing that leads them 
northward to cool spawning grounds. Nowhere 
in nature is there an unsatisfied longing, an in- 
stinct unmatched by reality. Shall the only ex- 
ception be man, with this instinctive longing for 
immortality, planted in the breast of the lowest 
savage % 

Look at the old age of great men such as Glad- 
stone. See how their souls reach out for larger 
things, never so vigorously. Every year is an 
advance in goodness and wisdom. Does not that 
imply that the soul is to go right on % 

62 



All We Need to Know of the Future 

But all these arguments seem needless, however 
strong, when we stand by the empty tomb of 
Jesus Christ, when we hear Him assure us, ' ' As 
I live, ye shall live also. I am the resurrection 
and the life." 

The fact that we are told little about this coining 
existence to satisfy our curiosity need not trouble 
us. As Helen Hunt Jackson sung : 

11 1 hold that if it be 
Less than enough to any soul to know 
Itself immortal, immortality 
In all its boundless spaces will not find 

A place designed 

So small, so low, 
That to a fitting home such soul can go." 

Fuller stood at a smith's forge and saw him put 
into the fire a piece of cold, rusty iron, which he 
afterward removed, bright and sparkling. ' l And 
thus," said he, "it is with our bodies : they are 
laid down in the grave, dead, heavy, earthly ; 
but at that general conflagration, this dead, 
heavy, earthly body shall arise living, light- 
some, glorious." This is about all that is re- 
vealed to us. 

But it is enough. We know that we are to be 
like Him, " for we shall see Him as He is." We 
are to have new powers for new work and new 
enjoyment, powers so far above our present un- 
derstanding that they could not be disclosed to us. 

How happily and proudly we should live, in 
view of this splendid destiny ! How faithful to 
our Lord Christ, who alone has won it for us ! 
Let us say over and over to ourselves as we go 
about our task, ' ' I am to live forever j let me live 
well to-day." 

63 



Obeying When It is Hard 



An old sailor was talking with a young ap- 
prentice. Said he: " Aboard a man- o'- war, my 
lad, there's only two things — one's duty, t' other's 
mutiny." 

No less strict and absolute are our relations 
with our Captain . The discipline of the Kingdom 
of Heaven is military. Christ says "Come," and 
we are to come ; " Go," and we are to go. 

The Duke of Wellington had issued a certain 
order to an officer, who tried to show the duke 
that it could not be carried out. "Sir," said 
Wellington, i ' I did not ask for your opinion ; I 
gave you my orders. ' ' Christ is not so harsh, but 
He is equally authoritative ; 1 1 Ye are my friends, 
if ye do whatsoever I command you." 

Obedience is the secret of the joy of heaven. 
Once a Sunday-school class were discussing the 
description of angels, " Ministers of His who do 
His pleasure," and the teacher asked how the 
angels obey God. "They do it directly," said 
one. "And well," said another. "And with 
all their hearts," said a third. But the fourth 
gave the best answer, for she added, ' ' They do it 
without asking any questions." 

And this same obedience, that is the secret of 
the joy of heaven, is the foundation of all the 
heavens on earth that have ever been established. 
A successful Christian worker, on his death-bed, 
was asked how it was that he had accomplished 
so much in his life. " The secret of my life," he 
answered, " is that I have said 'Yes' to Christ." 

64 



Obeying When It is Hard 

Saying k ' Yes ' ' to Christ will make any life happy 
and prosperous. 

On the contrary, there are many who rind this 
way of obedience too hard. Perhaps the average 
life is justly set forth in a stern inscription on an 
old slab in the cathedral of Lubeck, Germany : 

1 ' Thus speaketh Christ, our Lord, to us : 
Ye call me Master, and obey me not ; 
Ye call me Light, and see me not ; 
Ye call me Way, and walk me not ; 
Ye call me Life, and desire me not ; 
Ye call me Wise, and follow me not ; 
Ye call me Fair, and love me not ; 
Ye call me Rich, and ask me not ; 
Ye call me Eternal, and seek me not ; 
Ye call me Gracious, and trust me not ; 
Ye call me Noble, and serve me not ; 
Ye call me Mighty, and honor me not ; 
Ye call me Just, and fear me not ; 
If I condemn you, blame me not." 

Now the difficulty of obedience, instead of dis- 
heartening the Christian, should be his glory and 
his spur. It is Christ's testimony to our possi- 
bilities. He does not try us above what we are 
able to bear. He knows that fine steel cannot be 
made without fire, nor fine characters outside the 
furnace of affliction. He isolates us, that we may 
get strength in ourselves. He impoverishes us, 
that we may seek the true riches. He withdraws 
the praise of men, that we may seek the honor of 
God. And as the chemist is careful not to allow 
the furnace a fraction of a degree hotter than is 
necessary for the steel, so God renders no human 
life the least degree more difficult than is neces- 
sary for our character. 

65 



The Guiding Hand 



When Stanley was about to cross Africa for the 
first time, many of the strong men in his party 
burst into tears as they set out. They were not 
cowardly, but they were overcome by the thought 
of the terrific hardships which they knew lay be- 
fore them. 

Every human life is a journey as difficult and 
perilous ; and we might well shrink from it, had 
we no Guide. What absolute madness it is to set 
out alone ! 

I have read the story of a conceited young cap- 
tain who would not wait off shore for a pilot to 
come on board, to take him through the narrows 
into the harbor. " I am my own pilot, 77 was his 
proud reply to all remonstrances, and he prom- 
ised to be in the harbor by daybreak. He was, 
— cast ashore, dead, amid the fragments of his 
wretched vessel. Such has been the fate of many 
a man who would be his own pilot amid the rocks 
and shoals of life. 

When travelers climb dangerous places in the 
Alps, they are fastened to their guide. They 
have become a part of him. They may slip and 
fall, but he will not. His firmness, strength, and 
agility are theirs. So may we be bound to our 
omnipotent Guide ; and, thus united with wisdom 
and security, we may travel through life without 
a tremor of fear. Let us pray with Lucy Lar- 
com: 

66 



The Guiding Hand 

11 Thou must lead me, and none other, 
Tmest Lover, Friend and Brother ; 
Thou art my soul's shelter, whether 
Stars gleam out or tempests gather ; 
In Thy presence night is day ; 
Show me Thy way ! ' ' 

But there are conditions. As Dr. Mabie says, 
" The man who would have God's guidance must 
be willing to make spiritual things his main busi- 
ness." When the pilot comes on board, even 
the captain is his subordinate. When you set 
out with an Alpine guide, you are under his or- 
ders, and not he under yours. Disobedience cuts 
the rope that binds you to your heavenly Guide, 
and back you fall into the crevasse. 

This is why, with so much said about God's 
guidance in our lives, so few have practical ex- 
perience of it. Few are willing to pay the price 
of it. 

It is a happy price, but we do not understand 
that at first. It looks like dependence, but it is 
the only independence possible for us. It looks 
like bondage, but it is "the glorious liberty of 
the children of God." 

This is because more and more, as we go on in 
the pathway of obedience, we come into union 
with our Guide. It is not a rope linking us to 
Him, but He has entered our very lives. Where 
is the dependence, the bondage, when our Guide 
and Master has thus become a part of ourselves f 

This is the great mystery of our religion, the 
mystery which Christ, the God-man, not only 
taught clearly, but gave in His own person the 
supreme illustration of it. We are to be one 
with Him, even as He was one with the Father. 
" Even so, come, Lord Jesus ! " 

67 



Hoops Around the World 



Peace is not always to be sought for. Christ 
came, He said, to bring a sword, to set brother 
at variance with brother, and children with 
fathers, that a man's foes should be they of his 
own household. And yet He is called, and 
rightly, the Prince of Peace. 

For, as Buskin says, u ~No peace was ever won 
by subterfuge or agreement ; no peace is ever in 
store for any of us, but that which we shall win 
by victory over shame or sin." Eichard Hovey 
has painted a terrible picture of that false peace 
in which no Christian will acquiesce : 

" There is peace, you say — I believe you. Peace ! Aye, we 

know it well — 
Not the peace of the smile of God, but the peace of the 

leer of Hell. 
Peace, that the rich may fatten and barter their souls for 

gain j 
Peace, that the hungry may slay and rob the corpse of the 

slain ; 
Peace, that the heart of the people may rot with a vile 

gangrene. 
What though the men are bloodless ? What's a man to a 

machine ? ' ' 

Doubtless, therefore, as Dean Stanley said, 
11 there are times when controversy becomes a 
necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an 
evil." Let us remember that contests are only 
the rough stairway to a summit where we may all 
meet and clasp hands in view of a world that 
is whole, an unbroken horizon. In the midst of 

68 



Hoops Around the World 

all our necessary contentions we are to look for- 
ward eagerly to the time when 

' ' The days of war are past ; the Prince of peace 
Doth sit betwixt the Hattin peaks of time, 
While sounds across the earth the rhyme 
Of love's beatitudes.'' 

The remarkable relationship of blood that 
binds together, through the offspring of that 
wonderful Victoria, the thrones of England, Ger- 
many, and Russia, with many lesser realms, is 
only one object-lesson of human brotherhood and 
omen of universal peace. Rapidly we are com- 
ing to understand, even the most stupid of us, 
the kinship of mankind. Since the Congress of 
Vienna in 1815 there have been held twenty-seven 
great international congresses and conferences, 
discussing, and often finally settling, questions 
which in less happy days would surely have led 
to war. The greatest of these was the Hague 
Conference of 1899, establishing the Permanent 
International Court of Arbitration. 

No reason but one accounts for this drawing 
together of the nations : we are drawing closer 
to God. 

There was once a cooper who, when he discov- 
ered a quarrel among his neighbors, would say 
to them, ' ' Brothers, we are springing apart ; 
come in and let' s put on another hoop. ' ' Then he 
would get them to go to his lowly home, and pray 
over the matter, and thus he seldom failed to bind 
a new friendship. . 

Brothers, let us put new and strong hoops 
around the world ! 

69 



Consecrated to One's 
Country 



The con in "consecration" means wholly. 
When we consecrate ourselves to our country we 
become wholly hers, our bodies, minds, and 
hearts, our time, money, ambitions, all at her 
service. 

Does this conflict with the claims of religion ? 

We shall never reach the heart of true patriot- 
ism until we cease to think of our country in 
personal terms, and begin to identify it with men 
and women. The dear ones in your house, your 
neighbor with a sick child, your grocer whose 
bill you owe, yonder cabman out in the hot sun, 
these are your country. The street in front of 
your house, the choked-up gutter yonder, the 
new town hall, these also are your country. 
Carry the review outward over as many leagues 
as your country extends, but never forget that 
your country begins at home. 

Now how can we consecrate ourselves — wholly 
devote ourselves — to this living, breathing, famil- 
iar, majestic country of ours? 

First, our bodies. Every drunkard is a traitor, 
playing false to his country, defrauding it of the 
manhood, the money, the labor and upbuilding 
it has a right to expect from him. And in lesser 
or greater degree, every one who weakens his 
body is injuring his country. Firm muscles, 
steady nerves, good sleep and digestion, a long, 
health-filled life, these are notable parts of patri- 
otism, as such citizens as Gladstone of England 
and Eoosevelt of America abundantly illustrate. 

70 



Consecrated to One's Country 

Second, our minds. There are many things 
the patriot should know : the history of his 
country, the character of officials and candidates, 
the forms of government, the ways of parties, 
the laws, the rights of citizens, relations to other 
lands. Patriotism without knowledge is like a 
banner without a staff, a flabby, flippant thing, 
carried off on any wind that blows. An ignorant 
man will be firing at his own capitol the shot he 
intends in its defence. 

Third, our consciences. The con here means 
"with." Knowledge is not enough: we must 
Jcnow with God. Without a conscience, the stronger 
your body and the fuller your mind, the worse 
for you and your country. Conscience, when you 
know a man is evil, will lead you to vote against 
him, though he belong to your own party. Con- 
science will spur your courage to protest against 
iniquity. Conscience will lead you to stand 
alone, if need be, on God's side. 

Poor Philip Nolan, in Hale's powerful story, 
is not the only " Man without a Country." One 
may be such a man without being condemned, as 
Nolan was, to a life at sea, with no hint of native 
land. The unfaithful citizen is a man without a 
country, he who is wrapped up in his own selfish 
interests and is heedless of the sorrows and joys 
of mankind. As Scott painted him in that fa- 
mous portrait, 

"The wretch concentred all in self 
Living, shall forfeit high renown, 
And, doubly dying, shall go down 
To the vile dust from whence he sprung, 
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung." 

71 



Religious Barrenness 



A New Zealand girl, taken to England to be 
educated, there became a Christian. Soon after, 
she set out to return home. " Why not remain 
in England?' 7 asked her friends. "You love 
this land ; why tempt the unknown perils of 
those far-away islands? 77 "What! 77 cried the 
Christ-found girl, indignantly; "do you think, 
after I have found the Christian's joy, I could 
keep it from my dear father and mother? I 
would go if I had to swim there ! 77 

Why did Christ, in His parable of the fig-tree, 
and later in His more severe miracle of the fig- 
tree, condemn religious barrenness so unspar- 
ingly ? Because if a man is a Christian, he must 
of necessity bring forth much fruit. A Christian 
that is not making other Christians is as much a 
contradiction in terms as a fire that is not warm- 
ing or a flame that is not lighting. 

Sternly does Eudyard Kipling sing : 

' ' One instant's toil to Thee denied 
Stands all eternity's offence." 

There is no more deadly peril for a Christian 
than to be content with merely not doing wrong. 
Do not dare to live on the negative side of the Ten 
Commandments. "Six days shalt thou labor. 77 
Glasgow is supplied with water by hidden pipes 
running far up among the hills to a lovely lake. 
There is the health, the fulness ; down below, the 
need. Is it a light matter if a Christian allows 

72 



Religious Barrenness 

the conduit of Christ's health, namely, his own 
life, to get clogged up? 

The fruit may be very modest, hidden beneath 
humble leaves. It is fruit that Christ wants, and 
not parade of fruit. George Macdonald, in a 
noble sonnet, pictures a vast cathedral, with min- 
istering priests busy at the altar in a gorgeous 
ceremonial. In a far corner a woman is sweep- 
ing. It is to her, and not to the great heads of 
the temple, that a quiet figure comes, saying 
softly, " Daughter, thou sweepest well my floor ! " 

Christ bears with us, for a time, as the vine- 
dresser bore with the fig-tree. He throws around 
us all fruitful influences. If ever a man is to 
bring forth fruit to God' s glory, it will be in this 
earth where God has made it so easy. 

There will come a day when it will be too late. 
There will come a time when in anguish of soul 
we shall pray the last prayer of Helen Hunt 
Jackson : 

"Father, I scarcely dare to pray, 
So clear I see, now it is done, 
That I have wasted half my day, 
And left my work but j ust begun ! 

" In outskirts of Thy kingdom vast, 
Father, the humblest spot give me ; 
Set me the lowliest task Thou hast, 
Let me, repentant, work for Thee ! ' ' 

God grant that, when that sure time arrives, 
we may have lived a life (as Mrs. Jackson had 
indeed) full of Christlike ministries, brave battles 
for the right, endurance of hardness, and confi- 
dence in Jehovah. 

73 



Decide To-Day 



A "workman, a wicked man and an infidel, 
was at work one day in the dome of the Crystal 
Palace of London. Suddenly he heard a great 
voice saying solemnly, ' ' This is a faithful say- 
ing, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ 
Jesus came into the world to save sinners. " 
From that day the man was a Christian. 

What was the great voice I It was Spurgeon's. 
The famous preacher, having to speak in the 
Crystal Palace, feared that he could not fill the 
vast area, and so came to test his voice, using 
only those words that the workman overheard. 

Spurgeon's voice was wonderful, but there is 
a greater. u To-day, if ye shall hear His voice, 
harden not your hearts.' 7 God speaks through 
the lips of His preachers, like Spurgeon ; through 
all Christians ; through good books ; through 
sacred music and art ; through the beautiful 
world He has made ; through the voice of con- 
science. And all these voices urge : ' ' Decide 
for God ! Decide to-day ! It will soon be too 
late!" 

There must be a choice. "Ye cannot serve 
God and mammon.' 7 Says Eobert E. Speer : 
' ' We must choose between the evil love of the 
world and the overflowing love of God." Moses 
made the choice when he ' * refused to be called 
the son of Pharaoh's daughter." It was the 
choice of the desert, but it made him the greatest 
man of all history. "Put the two side by side," 

74 



Decide To-Day 

says Webb-Peploe, ' ' the things of the world in 
one scale-pan and the things of God in the 
other, and see which kicks the beam." The 
choice of God is always a fortunate one. 

If you doubt this, if you think that you will 
not be prosperous or successful if you turn 
from worldliness to Christ, remember the story 
of Elizabeth and the merchant to whom the 
queen gave an important commission. The 
merchant objected. "What will become of 
my regular business if I undertake this % ' ' " You 
attend to my business," said the majestic mon- 
arch, "and I will take charge of your affairs." 
That will be your good fortune if you surrender 
to God : the King of kings will take charge 
of your affairs. 

But the yielding must come to-day. No other 
day is safe. There is an ancient tale of a king 
who hung a lamp in his palace and sent forth 
heralds to bring before him every criminal and 
rebel. If they came before the lamp went out, 
he would pardon them. If they delayed and 
arrived too late, he put them to a terrible death. 

So it is with our Judge. So it must be and 
should be. It is wise that there should be a 
limit even to divine patience and mercy. If we 
had all time to repent in, we should find no time 
for repentance. Even on earth we recognize a 
parent's wisdom in requiring instant obedience ; 
nothing less than that is kindness to the child. 
And we may be sure that our Father in heaven 
is as wise as the earthly fathers He has made. 



75 



A Castaway 



The most pathetic sight on earth, I think, is 
the sight of those poor old women that, on a 
cold Winter's morning, will shiver along the 
city streets poking among the ash-barrels for 
chance bits of castaway utilities. They them- 
selves are castaways, often made so by their 
own sin. 

It is easy to undervalue castaways. Those 
poor old women could tell you astonishing stories 
of the actual worth of what the rich toss into 
their ash-barrels. That city missionary yonder, 
groping cheerfully in the great human ash- 
barrel of society, could tell you many a hopeful 
story of jewels found among the cinders. John 
B. Gough was a castaway. 

I used to sift the u clinkers" from my ashes 
and burn them over again, and I got many a 
hot fire out of a cold ash-barrel. Soon I found, 
however, that my time and clothes, or another 
man's wages, cost more than the coal I saved, 
so now the u clinkers" go with the ashes to 
fill municipal hollows. 

Too many look in this way at the work of 
human rescue, and question whether the life 
expended is not worth more than the life saved. 
They forget that in this kind of toil the laborer 
is purified and strengthened, not soiled and 
weakened. No one that has tasted the ennobling 
delights of saving the men for whom Christ 
died will ever resign that hallowed occupation. 

But what are we to say of those who, so far 

76 



A Castaway 

from willingness to redeem the castaway, will 
not even, for his sake, resign a paltry pleasure f 
It has been well said that the perpetuation of 
the drink traffic is due to the moderate drinker. 
President John Henry Barrows temperately asks 
such a man: "Is it becoming in you, as one 
well disposed toward your fellows, to continue a 
habit which strengthens the drinking customs 
of society, and thus indirectly binds the fetters 
of drunkenness on weaker men?" And Dr. 
Barrows adds : " I know a rich man in Provi- 
dence whose only son had been brought home 
to him intoxicated, and he reproached him, 
saying: 'I have done everything for you. 7 
' Yes,' said the son, ' and you taught me to drink 
wine.' And he struck his father to the earth." 

And further, no moderate drinker is himself 
out of danger. It is from his ranks alone, and 
constantly, that the terrible, sad hosts of drunk- 
ards is made up ; and every man of them was 
sure he could stop when he wanted to. Oh, 
young man, heed what was said by that brilliant, 
kind-hearted, poet-souled drunkard, Charles 
Lamb, who once wrote : 

" Could the youth, to whom the flavor of his 
first wine is delicious as the opening scenes of 
life or the entering upon some newly-discovered 
paradise, be made to understand what a dreary 
thing it is when a man shall feel himself going 
down a precipice with open eyes and a passive 
will, could he feel the body of the death out of 
which I cry hourly with feebler and feebler out- 
cry to be delivered, it were enough to make him 
dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all 
the pride of its mantling temptation." 

77 



What I Owe to Christ 



The most artistic of all toys is the kaleido- 
scope. It never repeats itself. Turn it as often 
as you will, it ever discovers new combinations 
of beauty. 

Such is the character of Christ before the eyes 
of a loving disciple. Contemplation of it never 
becomes wearisome or profitless ; nay, the longer 
we gaze, the loftier becomes our enjoyment, and 
our wonder the more profound. Now He is shep- 
herd, now physician ; to-day the light, to-morrow 
the vine or the bread ; at one time the word, at 
another time the teacher ; judge, guide, brother, 
friend, consoler, saviour, admonisher, prophet, 
priest, king, the fulness of the divine majesty — 
there is no completion of His excellencies, but 
every desire finds in Him a fresh gratification and 
every need a new supply. 

A Christian young Indian once prayed this 
prayer : "I hear Thou sittest in light, but I have 
sat all my life among the darknesses. Good Chief, 
if Thou wilt lighten my darkness, send down Thy 
Spirit into my heart, that He may lead to where 
I may rest. I ask this because Thou art Jesus 
Christ." 

That is the Christian argument— just because 
Christ is what He is. It is argument for our 
faith ; we can trust Him. It is argument for our 
peace j He dwells within us. It is argument for 
our immortality ; He has pledged His own eternal 
life for ours. It is argument for our prayers ; He 
has promised to answer. It is argument for our 

78 



What I Owe to Christ 

good cheer ; he is with us. It is argument for 
our purity ; He cleanses us. It is argument for 
our power ; we can do all things, for He strength- 
ens us. 

What we owe to Christ is — Christ ; not His 
miracles, not His words, even, but that matchless 
personality which, by His deeds, His sayings, 
His death, His life in countless disciples since, 
and most of all by the loving influence of His 
present Spirit, He is pressing upon us. 

If you would gain the inestimable blessings 
which these nineteen Christian centuries have 
found in Christ, you must gain them, not by 
logic, but by life. Satisfy your reason, by all 
means, if Christian evidences are not familiar to 
you : but do not expect the proving of Christ to 
do what only the loving of Christ can accomplish. 
Eealize His presence. The gracious, masterful per- 
sonality disclosed in the Bible — think Him into 
your daily living. Talk with Him. Bring Him 
your griefs, your joys. Obey Him. Ask great 
things from Him. And finally, as you gain Him 
for yourself, seal the mystic union by doing as 
He did, by giving Christ, and yourself with 
Christ, to others. Heed Sir Edwin Arnold's 
precept, and make your life one song of the Be- 
deemer : 



" The sovereign voice spoke once more in mine ear : 
1 Sing now a song unstained by any tear ! ' 
1 What shall I sing ? ' I ask ; the voice replied, 
' Sing what we tell thee of the Crucified. ' 
1 How shall I sing,' I ask, ' who am not meet 

One word of that sweet speaking to repeat ? ' 
4 It shall be given unto thee ! Do this thing, ' 

Answered the voice ; ' wash thy lips clean and sing.' " 

79 



Christ Our High Priest 



In one of Charles Wesley's noblest poems occurs 
the line, c l God only knows the love of God. ' 7 We 
are constantly forgetting the divine infinitude, 
and satisfying ourselves with petty representa- 
tions of God ; this is our way of breaking the 
second commandment. 

There is this danger in reading the comparison 
of Christ to the Jewish high priest, given in the 
letter to the Hebrews, and we must constantly 
bear in mind that the comparison was written for 
a people to whom the high priest was the supreme 
earthly embodiment of their longings and hopes. 
He entered into their most mysterious shrine. He 
represented them before God Himself. He gath- 
ered into his own person, symbolically, all their 
festering sins, all their half- ashamed excellencies, 
all their pulsing desires, and laid them before 
God in His sacrifices, the sin to be burned up, the 
excellencies to be graciously received as a sweet- 
smelling savor, and the prayers to return to ful- 
filment. 

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews could 
use no more splendid symbol than this, if he was 
to use a symbol at all in presenting Christ to them. 
It compares Christ to a man, but then, Christ was 
a man. Christ also gathered up into His one life 
all human sins, excellencies, longings, and offered 
them before God. Nay, He was not only the high 
priest, but He became the sacrifice. Nay, He was 
not only the sacrifice, but He was the God who 
received the sacrifice and honored it. 

80 



Christ Our High Priest 

We enter, in this comparison, the deepest and 
most precious theme of Christianity, the doctrine 
of the atonement. I am satisfied that mere argu- 
ment never convinced a man of the truth of this 
doctrine. I myself have been led from flat denial 
of it into a recognition of it so fervent and grate- 
ful that I can scarcely think of it without tears ; 
and the perception of its truth has come to me 
through a struggle against my sins, absolutely 
helpless until Christ's help came, and through a 
longing for the removal of sin, absolutely hope- 
less were it not for the cross of Christ. I do not 
believe that any one who is not a convicted, re- 
pentant sinner can know the atonement as a vital 
truth. 

This is not because the atonement is unreason- 
able, for it is the most reasonable of doctrines ; it 
is because the atonement meets a need, the most 
severe need of humanity, meeting it in the only 
possible way ; but we must experience the need 
before we can know the remedy. 

Here is a profound medicine. The chemist can 
analyze it, the physician can state its curative 
properties, but only the sick man, through whose 
veins it has coursed in marvelous, health-restoring 
power, has any real comprehension of what that 
medicine is ; and how paltry, compared with his 
vital knowledge, is the physician's formula, the 
chemist's analysis ! 

u Stronger His love than death or hell ; 
Its riches are unsearchable : 

The first-born sons of light 
Desire in vain its depths to see ; 
They cannot reach the mystery, 

The length, the breadth, the height." 

81 



Do I Encourage Others? 



Next to creating, making from the beginning, 
is the art of recreating, making over again. If 
you can take some one who is only half a man, 
all eaten with worries and worn with fears, and 
make him a whole man, restoring to him his 
courage and hope and good cheer, have you not 
done a God-like deed ? 

It is strange that so many are eager to lavish 
their time, strength, and genius on a block of 
marble or a square of canvas, when they might 
use flesh and blood for their statues, and human 
life for their paintings, and all eternity for their 
studio. It is strange that so much art should be 
lavished upon u still life," and withheld from the 
pulsing, hungry, responsive, immortal lives that 
crowd about us. What is " high art," anyway? 

If encouragement is to put life into a man, dis- 
couragement is to put death into him. The word 
comes from the Latin cor, which means heart ; to 
discourage a man is to take out of him the heart, 
the centre of life. 

Men are twice men when they are praised. If 
employers understood this, they could easily di- 
minish their number of laborers and increase 
their bank account. An athlete will perform 
feats before a hurrahing crowd he could never 
perform in solitude. College boys know well 
enough that if they want their team to win they 
must shout for it. 

A word of encouragement is always the most 
profitable of investments. Nothing else returns 

82 



Do • I Encourage Others ? 

so great dividends. Julian Legrand, the Paris 
merchant, never tired of telling how, in the panic 
of 1857, his firm was on the brink of certain 
failure for lack of $100,000, which for two days 
he had tried in vain to raise. The crisis was at 
hand, when a stranger entered his office, and of- 
fered him the needed sum on his personal note 
without interest. Legrand had been member 
of a school committee years before, and, not prais- 
ing merely the rich boys, had gone to a certain 
poor lad, commended him for his work in the ex- 
amination, and told him he could do better if he 
tried. That had been the turning point of the 
poor boy's life, and now he had come to repay, 
in part, the debt he owed for that one word of 
encouragement. 

If we could be sure of such a money return for 
our words of praise, encouragement would be as 
common as discouragement is now ! Why can 
we not remember that the coin of heaven is more 
enduring than the gold of earth, and that any 
good influence on an immortal soul enriches us 
infinitely more than would the bank balance of a 
Eothschild % 

It is a homely verse, this of John P. Trow- 
bridge's, but it admirably sums up this homely 
theme : 

" How many smiles there could be 
If folks would always say 
1 Good-morning, neighbor, let me give 
A helping hand to-day ! ' 

' ' How many smiles there will be, 
My friend, when yon and I 
Have learned to practise what we wish 
These other folks would try J v 

83 



The Life of Faith 



Abraham's great deed of faith gave him his 
title. Henceforth it was u faithful Abraham" ; 
yes, and "Abraham, the father of the faithful," 
so true is it that faith, wherever shown, gives rise 
to faith in others. Be sure that whatever act of 
faith you perform will become at once a conspic- 
uous feature of your life, will color your charac- 
ter, will create your fame. If you want to be 
known, well, far, and long, there is no better, no 
quicker way than to do a deed of faith. 

Faith is leaving the ignoble seen for the noble 
unseen. Faith is a leap in the outer dark, in 
obedience to the inner light. Faith is willing- 
ness to sacrifice the lesser present for the greater 
future. Faith is the triumph of the spirit over 
the flesh, of God over gold, of heaven over earth. 

Faith always means a giving up. Abraham 
gave up home and friends and secure possessions, 
for faith in God and Canaan. Livingstone gave 
up ease and safety and native land and life itself 
for faith in the African. William of Orange 
gave up his all for faith in freedom. 

But faith always gives back far more than it 
demands. It gave Abraham new wealth and the 
Jewish nation, it gave William of Orange the 
grateful honor of an enfranchised people, it gave 
Livingstone the undying love of the Dark Conti- 
nent, it gave all three the priceless approval of 
God. 

"I know whom I have believed," shouted 
Paul when the world assailed him. " When 

84 



The Life of Faith 

Martin Luther," says Dr. Cuyler, "was struck 
with sudden tempests he used to sing the Forty- 
sixth Psalm above the roar of the winds ; his 
anchor never dragged." The highest faith lays 
hold of the loftiest personality, and faith in one's 
self, in the laws of nature, in the destiny of na- 
tions, or even in the love of friends, is as noth- 
ing compared with faith in God. 

There is only one way to confirm and quicken 
this faith, and that is to live with God, to set 
one's affections on things above. It is fabled 
that the moon, in an eclipse, complained that the 
sun was not shining on her as usual. "lam 
shining as I always do, ' ' answered the sun, l ' but 
don't you see that the earth has got between us % " 
So it is when our faith grows dim and the Sun of 
our soul is obscured ; always the world has come 
in between. 

But faith, we must never forget, is not sight. 
Our vision of God, at best, is dimmed by earth's 
atmosphere, by the dark facts of sorrow, sin, and 
death. Phillips Brooks said once that very often, 
when men pray for more faith, what they really 
want is not more faith but more sight. We want 
God to show us the happy outcome of our present 
griefs ; but God wants us to bear them, trusting 
in Him, without the knowledge of future com- 
pensations. We want God to show us the use of 
the disagreeable task He has set us ; but God 
wants us to do it because we love Him and con- 
fide in Him, without seeing the results or know- 
ing that any results will come. 

Let us thank God for the darkness, which per- 
suades us to clasp His hand ! 



85 



Standing Alone for Christ 



Standing alone ! It is not an easy thing. It 
calls for all the manhood in us. If we do it for 
God, it makes men of us. 

Dr. P. S. Henson, in a lecture on " Backbone, " 
once gave some stirring instances : "It is one 
thing," he said, " to tonch elbows ; it is one thing 
to feel the inspiration of fellowship as you staud 
awaiting the charge — but to stand alone, as Noah 
stood in the midst of a surging sea, in the midst 
of a mocking multitude ; to stand as Abraham 
stood beside the altar on which his only beloved 
son was stretched, and lifted the gleaming knife 
while his heart was in his throat, and yet obey 
God ; to stand as Moses stood in the presence of 
the king, with the proud consciousness that he 
was God's ambassador ; to stand as Elijah stood 
in the presence of the wicked Ahab ; to stand as 
those young Hebrews stood in the vast multitude 
who debased their manhood before the image that 
the king set up — three that stood erect in their 
God- given manhood j to staud as Nehemiah stood 
when he proudly said, l Shall such a man as I 
flee ! ? ; to kneel as Daniel did, though the lions 
were snarling yonder in their den ; to stand as 
John the Baptist stood in the presence of guilty 
Herod ; to stand as Paul stood, reasoning of right- 
eousness, temperance, and judgment, till he made 
Felix tremble on his throne ; to stand as Savona- 
rola stood in the presence of the guilty duke ; to 
stand as Martin Luther stood in the Diet of 
Worms ; to stand as Columbus stood in the midst 

86 



Standing Alone for Christ 

of a mutinous crew with his eyes searching for 
the world that lay beyond," — ah, this standing- 
alone is heroic work ; it needs heroes, and it 
makes them. 

But, after all, no man is alone who stands for 
God. David did not face Goliath alone. The 
mountains were full of chariots and horses round 
about Elisha. Christ could at any time summon 
twelve legions of angels. Paul always felt him- 
self encompassed about with a great crowd of 
witnesses. 

The best way, then, to get courage to stand 
alone before men is to spend much time alone 
with God. As we come to realize His presence 
always with us, we care less and less whether hu- 
man forces are with us or not. 

But God's presence with us is not enough. 
There is a phrase often heard in the prayers of 
old-fashioned people : u Be with us, and that to 
bless. ' ' God may be with us as a Judge, condemn- 
ing us. It is thus He is with the wicked. We 
can face men only as God is with us as a Friend. 

The secret of courage, then, is obedience. We 
are Christ 1 s friends, He said, if we do whatsoever 
He commands us. It is the well -disciplined troops 
that defend Therniopylses ; the mutinous soldiers 
are quickly put to rout. If we have placed our- 
selves unreservedly on Christ' s side, then He will 
stand at our side against all the world. 

"He has not learned the lesson of life," said 
Emerson stoutly, l c who does not every day sur- 
mount a fear." And the best way to surmount 
fears is with Christ to surmount Calvary. There 
is no " red badge of courage " equal to the blood 
of the cross. 

87 



Glorifying God in 
Our Work 



Work is something for which to be profoundly 
grateful. Said Charles Kingsley : "Thank God 
every morning that you have something to do 
that day which must be done, whether you like 
it or not. Being forced to work and to do your 
best will breed in you a hundred virtues which 
the idle never know." A very ancient Greek 
manuscript discovered recently contained some 
hitherto unknown sayings of Jesus, and one of 
them is: "Baise the stone, and thou shalt find 
me ; cleave the wood, and I am there." Dr. van 
Dyke interprets this as meaning that the worker, 
though toiling only with wood and stone, will 
find Christ in his work. 

If you want to find Christ in your work, and 
glorify God by it, you must enjoy your work. 
That is one cause of the superb success of Presi- 
dent Eoosevelt, he throws himself into all his 
tasks as if they were recreation. He was making 
a journey once, and rose from his bed in the car 
to make his fourteenth speech for the day and 
shake hands with the crowd. One of his com- 
panions was sympathizing with him, but he said, 
" No ; don't feel sorry for me. I like it." 

But we shall not enjoy our work unless we do 
it well. Mr. Meyer declares that a chimney 
sweep will stand higher than an archbishop 
in God's sight "if he has driven the soot out 
of the intricacies of old chimneys with more 
eager care and with nobler purpose than the 
archbishop has administered his diocese. ' 7 Slov- 
enly work never glorifies God. 

88 



Glorifying God in Our Work 

Our labor will honor God the more the longer 
we toil faithfully at it. In a picture gallery in 
Belgium two pictures, one almost a daub, the 
other a splendid masterpiece, hang side by side. 
Both are the work of Eembrandt, but the one is 
his first painting, while the other was painted 
after years of hard practice had developed his 
powers. Do not make the fatal mistake of grow- 
ing discouraged if you do not at once succeed in 
your work for God. One ingredient in success is 
always patience. 

Wesley's rule for work was expressed in his 
famous maxim, "All at it, and always at it." 
The last half of the motto is especially necessary, 
if one would work well. On an ancient building 
in England is a motto that has become famous : 
" Do ye nexte thynge." It is by doing the next 
task, and the next after that, smoothly and un- 
flinchingly, that great life works get done. Ee- 
member the story of the slothful Scottish student 
who could see, in a window opposite, only a hand, 
traveling patiently, day after day, down reams 
of paper. That plodding hand taught the stu- 
dent how to succeed. It was the hand of Sir 
Walter Scott. 

The final rule for work that will honor God is 
this : Do it for God's sake. It is the motive that 
makes work glorious or ignoble. You have heard 
the story of the sculptor who carved with exqui- 
site care a figure that was to be placed so far up 
on the cathedral tower that it would scarcely be 
seen. But when his fellow workmen laughed at 
his painstaking, he nobly said, "Nay ; God will 
see it." 



89 



Christ, the Great Physician 



To think of Christ as the Physician is to revo- 
lutionize the ordinary view of life. For most 
men look upon sin ajs a pleasure — unlawful, to be 
sure, but still pleasure ; but Christ sees sin to be 
pain. 

The earthly physician is called only when we 
are sick. I have read that the Chinese have a 
better custom, paying the doctor to keep them 
well, and stopping his pay when they fall ill ! 
At any rate, it is a great mistake to seek Christ 
only in misfortune, and such procrastination is 
one of the chief reasons why misfortunes come. 

Christ, like any earthly physician, does not 
come till He is called. He is always near, 
eagerly waiting to be called, but for our good 
He waits till we call Him. He knows that an 
uninvited physician can work no cure. 

But when we call, how quickly He comes ! 
We may summon an earthly doctor by telephone, 
and he may be whirled toward us in an auto- 
mobile, but Christ needs only the flash of a 
desire, and instantly He is with us. 

Then, He comes always in love and pity. 
Earthly physicians are sometimes proud and 
pompous, but Christ is always meek and lowly. 
They are sometimes stern and harsh and gruff, 
but He is always the living sunshine. They do 
not always sympathize, they may grow callous ; 
but He pities "like as a father pitieth his chil- 
dren," and every new case finds in Him new 
loving kindness. 

90 



Christ, the Great Physician 

Then, Christ's service is " without money and 
without price." The more skilful and famous 
an earthly physician, the more he is likely to 
charge j but here is the most skilful and famous 
of all physicians, and He is glad to come freely. 
2s T ay, He is glad to pay us for receiving Him, 
even giving us a kingdom ! 

Earthly physicians make mistakes ; how often 
they blunder! It is so hard, with our poor 
vision, to make the right diagnosis, to prescribe 
the right medicines. But Christ's vision pierces 
beyond the reach of the X-rays, He never makes 
a mistake, His remedies are specifics. It is such 
a comfort to put ourselves under the care of such a 
physician, and be absolutely certain of getting 
well! 

To be sure, like earthly physicians, Christ 
must sometimes use the probe and the knife. 
He must cut away diseased flesh, He must sear 
the wounds, He must give bitter draughts. Until 
there is harmless sin there cannot be painless 
surgery. But all of Christ's cuttings are to cure, 
and His bitter draughts are, to the understanding 
soul, sweeter than honey. 

Yes, Christ has conquered death, the last 
enemy. He has conquered it in such fashion, 
once for all, that it need no longer have domin- 
ion over any one of us. We have only to look 
to Him, believing, and through our veins will 
rush the new life, the abundant life, the life that 
knows no waning and no ending. 

" The healing of His seamless dress 
Is by our beds of pain ; 
We touch Him in life's throng and press, 
And we are whole again. ' ' 

91 



The Pen Behind the 
Tapestry 



When Bishop Latimer was on trial for heresy, 
he was speaking freely in his own defence when 
he heard the scratch of a pen coming from be- 
hind the tapestry, and realized that a clerk, con- 
cealed there, was taking down every word he was 
saying. From that moment he spoke slowly, 
carefully weighing every word that he uttered. 

Like that tapestry is the veil of eternity, and 
behind it sits ever One who is writing a l ' book 
of remembrance." "Of every idle word that 
men shall speak, they shall give account thereof 
in the day of judgment." How carefully we 
should speak, in view of that solemn and eternal 
record ! Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, paraphrasing 
a line of Tennyson, writes : 

•'He is the King, I teach — 

Though born of the throne or the sod — 
Who doth but honor his speech 
As if it were said by his God." 

We think much of the negatives of speech — 
how we are not to talk. We are ready to assent 
to Washington's maxim, " Vile words should not 
be spoken, in jest or earnest" ; though, to be 
sure, we often debase ourselves by smiling at lan- 
guage in an anecdote that would cause our cheeks 
to flush with indignation if it were spoken seri- 
ously — as if that made any difference ! 

A sin of the tongue that is seldom deplored is 
sarcasm, which Carlyle called "the natural lan- 
guage of the devil." Faber spoke truly: "No 

92 



The Pen Behind the Tapestry 

one was ever corrected by a sarcasm ; crushed, 
perhaps, if the sarcasm was clever enough — but 
drawn nearer to God, never." We are playing 
with edged tools indeed when we permit our- 
selves to use ' ' cutting words. ' ' 

A sin of the tongue that is still more common 
is slander. Wesley and some of his preachers 
solemnly subscribed to a set of rules, agreeing 
"not to listen to anything concerning each 
other," not willingly to believe it if they heard 
it ; and especially they agreed, as soon as they 
heard an evil report of any of their number, to 
tell it to him straightway, but not to tell any 
One else ! Those were wise rules. In rhyme they 
have thus been summed up : 

"Five things observe with care 
Of whom you speak, 
To whom you speak, 
And how, and when, and where." 

But we must not forget the positive rules for 
wise speech. And the first is, Be kind. Say of 
and to your friends to-day what you will wish 
you had said after they are dead. 

The second rule is, Be brave. Others may 
speak for Christ better than you, but they are 
not speaking, and here is a little space that 
Christ wants you to fill. Do your best. 

The third rule is, Be prompt. Opportunities 
for wise words will seldom wait for you to hunt 
through the dictionary and form fine phrases. It 
is by speaking as best you can as soon as you can 
that you learn to speak better. 

Finally, trust in God. He will give you, "in 
that hour,' 7 in every hour, what you shall say. 

93 



First-Fruits for God 



In one of his sermons, Phillips Brooks de- 
scribes the lighting of a candle. We roll up 
a bit of paper and set it ablaze. It will not 
burn long. But we bring it to the candle-wick, 
there is a quick response, and its nickering, 
uncertain fire passes into the steady burning 
of the candle. If we had tried to light a piece 
of granite, no matter how hot the fire that we 
laid against it, it would not light, but would 
only crumble to pieces. 

This is the difference between those that yield 
themselves to God and those that are disobedient 
to Him. Through the first, God can manifest 
His power and glory ; through the second He 
cannot. The first, God renders resplendent and 
beautiful ; the second, God must humble and 
break. 

The secret of all successful living lies in the 
Jewish custom of giving the first-fruits to God. 
It was like the touch of the burning paper on 
the candle, or the match to the lamp or the gas 
jet, little in itself, but great in what it signified 
and made possible. 

Whoever is ready and glad to give God the 
first-fruits of his life, will be ready and glad to 
give Him the second fruits also, and the third, 
and as much as He asks for. Whoever will 
give God the best, will of course give Him the 
next best, and the next. 

For example, the first-fruits of your time, that 
morning hour or half-hour when your brain is 

94 



First-Fruits for God 

clear and your thoughts leap easily to the 
heights of truth. Dedicate that to God. Use 
it in prayer, in meditation, on the Bible. You 
will find that the candle of your day's constancy 
and cheer will be lighted in those brief minutes. 

Or, take the first-fruits of your money. Set 
apart to sacred uses the tenth of your income, 
or some other definite proportion as your heart 
prompts you. The result will be that then for 
the first time you will really possess your pos- 
sessions, enjoy them, find them fruitful. 

So it will be with your talent, whatever 
masterful ability God has given you. It is dead 
— oh, how dead ! — until touched by the fire 
of consecration. Then it becomes brilliant with 
a heavenly radiance, and you sing, or speak, 
or write, with a power and splendor you had not 
approached before. 

These first-fruits are not to be given to God as 
if He were a tax-collector, demanding a certain 
per cent of our lives, and, when that is given, 
having no further claim upon us. Iso ; the 
first-fruits are only a symbol, only a token of 
the great truth that God owns us altogether, 
that He has a right to all we have and are, 
and that we are ready to yield it at an instant's 
call. 

No Christian can be happy in his service of 
God until this thought takes possession of him, 
until he ceases to try to satisfy God with a por- 
tion of his being, B and surrenders it unreservedly, 
simply taking back for his own use what God 
returns to him. There is no happiness in all the 
world like the knowledge that one belongs to 
God. 

95 



The Duty of Winsomeness 



Paul said he was ready to be all things to 
all men, if by any means he might win some 
one man. That is the object of winsomeness — 
to u winsome'' to Christ. That is the method 
of winsomeness — sympathy, tact, putting your- 
self in the other man's place. 

No one can be winsome that is selfish. If 
you are not interested in other people's affairs, 
they will not be interested in you. That is 
the point of the proverbial advice, "When in 
Rome, do as the Romans do." Talk music to 
a musician — or get him to talk music to you. 
Get down on your knees and play marbles with 
the boys. Learn to laugh with those that laugh 
and weep with those that weep. Forget your- 
self. Don't talk of your worries or accomplish- 
ments ; talk of other people's. Live in their 
lives. Be unselfish. 

Now no one can be unselfish without Christ. 
The only way to get rid of our unworthy selves is 
to obtain His glorious Self to come in and take 
their place. And the only object that will hold 
us to unselfish service of others is love of Christ. 
No one is ever permanently, continually win- 
some that merely tries to win persons to himself 
or herself. Ah, no ; there must be a motive 
beyond that ! 

My topic is "The Duty of Winsomeness," 
and winsomeness has its birth in a sense of 
duty — our duty to love other people and help 

96 



The Duty of Winsomeness 

them, our duty to love God and obey Him. 
But no one can be winsome merely from a sense 
of duty. Our winsomeness must be more than a 
task, it must be an instinct. Paul was not all 
things to all men from a sense of duty. At 
first he may have been, but as he kept on help- 
ing people in all kinds of ways, he soon became 
all things to all men by second nature. Help- 
fulness became a passion with him. 

If a man is winsome, he needs no other factor 
for success. A winsome person always looks 
beautiful, though the features may be misshapen 
and the skin sallow. A winsome lawyer wins 
his cases. A winsome merchant sells his goods. 
A winsome teacher gets his scholars to study. 
And it is exactly so if one would be successful 
in " our Father's business" ; winsomeness will 
count for more than any other quality. 

We do not cultivate winsomeness in religious 
work as we should. We think it is enough 
to know our Bibles and love them, without 
contriving how we may win others to know them 
and love them. We are satisfied with correct 
doctrines, and do not study how we may render 
those doctrines attractive to others. We tell 
people they ought to do this and that, and 
imagine we have done our duty ; but we have 
not, until we cause them to fall in love with 
their duty. 

Oh, to be like our Lord, whom the people 
heard gladly, and who, lifted up on the cross, 
has ever since drawn men and nations to Him- 
self ! 



97 



Helping One Another 



After Jacob Riis had published his powerful 
picture of New York slums entitled ' ' How the 
Other Half Lives," a stranger called at his office 
one day, and, finding him out, left a card : "I 
have read your book and have come to help. — 
Theodore Roosevelt." And Mr. Eiis adds, in tell- 
ing the story, "No one ever helped as he did. " 

The greater the man, the readier he is to help, 
and to take pains about his helpfulness. A beau- 
tiful story tells how a famous singer, passing 
along a street in Lyons, was accosted by a beggar. 
He had nothing to give her, so he hid his face 
with his hat pushed down over his forehead, and 
sung a wonderful song that drew a large crowd, 
from whom he collected a goodly sum of money 
for the poor woman. He thought he was un- 
known, but when next he appeared on the stage 
the wildly applauding throng would not let him 
proceed until he had sung the song he had sung 
for the beggar. 

It is pleasant and easy to help those that are in 
little need of help, our friends, good people, 
grateful people ; but Christ wants us to help es- 
pecially those that are lowest down in the mire. 
Eev. Charles Garrett persuaded a drunken cab- 
man to sign the pledge, but he was soon drinking 
again. So Mr. Garrett went to him and asked, 
' ' John, when your horse slips down in the mud, 
what do you do?" "Why, sir, I help him up 
again." "Well, John, the road was slippery, I 
know, and you have fallen ; but here's my hand 

98 



Helping One Another 

to help you up again." The cabman took Mr. 
Garrett's hand, profoundly moved, and promised 
never to fall again. 

It is as we try to help the people who most 
need help that we get closest to Christ, for there 
is where He is always at work. You have heard, 
have you not? the story of the preacher who 
climbed his church steeple so as to get close to 
God, and every Sunday dropped two written ser- 
mons on the heads below. When the preacher 
grew old, Christ called to him, "Come down and 
die." Greatly surprised, he called out from the 
steeple, " Where art Thou, Lord?" And Christ 
answered, l ' Down here among my people. ' ' 

One thought that should constantly spur us to 
help others is the knowledge that it will soon be 
too late. Other chances to help may come, but 
not this chance, or a chance at this person. Heed 
Mrs. Sangster's earnest words : 

' ' Ah, woe for the word that is never said 

Till the ear is deaf to hear, 
And woe for the lack to the fainting head 

Of the ringing shout of cheer ; 
Ah, woe for the laggard feet that tread 

In the mournful wake of the bier." 

And while we help others, we may be storing 
up help for ourselves. We can never be sure 
that we shall not ourselves need aid. ' ' However 
rich a man is, ' ' said Joseph Parker, ' ' he cannot 
do without some other man." Let us live^ for 
God and His world, and not to please ourselves ; 
and then all the world and God Himself will 
minister gladly to our every need. 

W C. 99 



What Giving Will 
do for You 



A rich woman dreamed that she went to 
heaven and there she saw a splendid mansion be- 
ing built. ' l For whom is that ? ' ' she asked ; and 
the answer was, " For your gardener.' 7 

Then she went on and saw a tiny cottage being 
built, and asked, "For whom is that?" The 
answer was, " For you." 

The rich woman was filled with dismay. 
"Why," she said, "my gardener has always 
lived in a little cottage. He might have had a 
better house, but he gave away so much to miser- 
able poor folks. But I am used to living in a 
mansion ; I shouldn't know how to live in a cot- 
tage." 

Then came a significant reply : "The Master 
Builder is doing His best with the material 
sent up." 

The result of our giving upon ourselves, our 
character, our happiness, our prospects, is not, 
to be sure, a very lofty consideration, but it is an 
important one, and very effective. If people 
only knew how much good it would do them to 
be liberal ! 

A banker gave his boy half a dollar to invest 
as a lesson in business, telling him to put it out 
at interest, and if he did it wisely, his capital 
should be increased. 

The boy came across a poor lad, who was rag- 
ged and hungry, and gave him the half dollar. 
When the banker heard of this he rebuked the 
boy for his lack of business sense. "But," said 

100 



What Giving Will do for You 

he, "I'll try you once more. Here is a dollar. 
See how well you can invest it." 

The boy burst out laughing, " My Sunday- 
school teacher told me," he said, " that giving to 
the poor is lending to the Lord, and she said He 
would return it double ; but I didn't think He 
would do it so soon." 

Indeed, it is often literally true, as George 
Herbert wrote, that 

11 Who shuts his hand hath lost his gold ; 
Who opens it hath it twice told." 

Or, as Whittier sings in the same strain : 

" Hands that ope but to receive 
Empty close ; they only live 
Richly who can richly give." 

And yet there is no immediate or necessary con- 
nection between giving to the poor and increase 
of our own wealth. If there were, men would 
all give from selfish motives, and there would be 
no real giving at all. Let us thank God that 
there is not. 

But even when giving leaves us poorer in 
worldly goods, it vastly enriches us in the goods 
of heaven. It broadens our sympathies. It 
widens our experience. It blesses us with grati- 
tude. It bestows on us the mind of the Master. 
It gives us an insight into divine things. It 
comforts us when sorrows come. It wins the 
loftiest of all honors, the praise of God. 

When it will do all this for us, and do it cer- 
tainly and ceaselessly, is it not amazing that our 
gifts are so small, so inconstant, and so grudging ? 

101 



Influencing in Spite of 
Ourselves 



Spurgeon used to tell of a man in Scotland 
who had come under the terrible power of strong 
drink. One day he went to the tavern, and took 
his little girl with him to lead him home after he 
had become drunk. He carried her on his 
shoulder. The poor child, as they approached 
the tavern, heard from within the sound of shout- 
ing and fighting, and begged her father not to go 
in. As she pleaded, a tear from her eye fell on 
the man's cheek. Big man as he was, the in- 
fluence of that little tear saved him to a temperate 
life, and he became one of the engineers of the 
great railroad bridge across the Firth at Edin- 
burgh. 

One of the most delightful of our studies up in 
heaven, I fancy, will be the history of the in- 
fluence of little words and deeds. We shall find 
that the progress of the world has depended on 
these far more than on what the world thinks 
great. How interesting will be the revised his- 
tories in the libraries of heaven ! 

It is literally true that every word we say sets 
in motion vibrations of ether that widen out and 
go on beating forever. In the same way every 
act of ours, though done in secret, makes au im- 
pression that nothing can efface. Somewhere 
there is ringing every sentence that fell from the 
lips of our Lord ; somewhere there are impressions 
of every act of Judas. 

Now if this is literally true, as every student of 
physics knows, of our words and deeds, it is true 

102 



Influencing in Spite of Ourselves 

also of the spiritual result of whatever we do and 
say. Every act has some influence, for good or 
evil, and it is an unending influence. As Henry 
Burton sung : 

" Never a word is said 

But it trembles in the air, 
And the truant voice has sped 

To vibrate everywhere ; 
And perhaps far off in eternal years 
The echo may ring upon our ears." 

When we go to bed at night, do we think of 
our day's work as done % It is never done ; it has 
only begun. That cross word is still at work, 
poisoning some life while we are asleep. That 
kind smile is still at work, making some life 
sweeter, though we have forgotten all about it. 

Do such thoughts make our lives too solemn ? 
Do you feel that you never can stop to think of 
the influence of your every word and deed ? 

You need not. Only make the heart right, 
and all your influence will be right ; for " out of 
the heart are the issues of life. ' ' 

The brook does not need to plan all its lovely 
curves, its dancing ripples, its pleasant songs as 
it flows over its stony bed, the drinks it gives to 
thirsty passers-by, the contributions it makes to 
the mill-wheel and the great river and the ocean. 
The brook merely flows on, from a pure source, 
and the rest takes care of itself. But if some one 
should put a package of arsenic in the source of 
the brook, how sadly all this would be changed ! 
Yet even then the brook would not plan the harm 
it would do ; it would only flow on, out of an im- 
pure source. 

103 



The Work That is in Us 



There is a story of a farmer who had a great, 
rugged " harvest hand." A visitor to the farm 
was looking at this laborer and remarked, ' i That 
fellow ought to be chock full of work." 

" He is," drily answered the farmer, " because 
I've never been able to get any out of him." 

A large number of Christians are like that farm 
laborer — with splendid possibilities, but limited 
realizations. It isn' t how big you are that counts, 
but how much you do with your bigness — or your 
littleness. How many times I have planned out 
some Christian work that I could do — I knew I 
could — and gone on quite satisfied, as if I had 
done it. But God was not satisfied ! 

A large number of Christians, too, are fiercely 
active about their worldly business, and make 
that an excuse for not doing work for the church. 
As the wise Frenchman, Amiel, wrote in his 
journal, u Activity is only beautiful when it is 
holy ; that is to say, when it is spent in the service 
of that which passeth not away." Tried by this 
test, how much of our work is beautiful and how 
much is ugly ? 

Of course, I do not mean that only church work 
is holy and beautiful. All work is holy when it 
is done for God, and no work — not even church 
work — is holy when it is done for one's self. 

Many think that they cannot work for God, as 
if working for Him required greater ability than 
to work for one's self. Eeally, it requires much 

104 



The Work That is in Us 

less, for God helps us when we try to work for 
Him, but He does not help us when we only try 
to work for ourselves. As Miss Havergal once 
wrote : " If any work is really God's giving, and 
He puts it either into our hearts to devise or into 
the power of our hands to do, no fear but He 
will also provide stuff sufficient, whether metal or 
mental." 

" Obey, then, the Master ! 
The furnace is steady, 
The braised metal ready ; 
Strike, welding it faster ! ' ' 

If we have this ideal of work for Christ, that it 
is our main business in life and that He is ready 
to help us in it, then we shall always be trying to 
better our Christian work. We shall paint away 
eagerly on our life canvas, because the Great 
Artist is in the next room, and comes in every 
hour to look over our shoulder. 

Let us lay down a programme with one feature 
in it, just one new thing we will do for the Master. 
Then, having done it, let us add one more task, 
and so on, joyfully and endlessly. For is not 
Christ, joyfully and endlessly, doing new and 
larger things for us I 



105 



The Chief Need of Missions 



" The foreign mission movement," says Secre- 
tary Perkins, of the Wesleyan Missionary So- 
ciety, "was born in prayer, and prayer is the 
vital breath by which it lives." 

This is quite as true of the home fields. The 
men that are at work among the degraded and 
ignorant of our own land are profoundly conscious 
of their own weakness and the weakness of the 
churches back of them. They know that they 
can fight successfully the great mass of iniquity 
that ever confronts them, only as they are buoyed 
up on a greater tide of prayer. 

Eead the letters that come from the mission- 
aries, or hear their pleas as they address us during 
their brief and overworked "vacations." You 
will find letters and speeches crowded with re- 
quests for prayer. 

Money is needed to carry on missionary enter- 
prises, sorely needed. Money is concrete life. 
It is the form our labor takes in the process of 
transfer from one to another. I have not gone to 
Africa or Idaho as a missionary, but I have la- 
bored here for a day, and gained two dollars, 
which I have sent to Africa or Idaho. There it 
is again transformed into labor. Therefore, to 
the extent of a day, I have myself been a mission- 
ary in Africa or Idaho. 

Money, therefore, is needed, for it is life. But 
prayer is needed far more than money, because 
prayer is back of money. If we pray for missions 
we shall give for missions ; if we do not pray for 

106 



The Chief Need of Missions 

them, we shall give very little, and that grudg- 
ingly, if we give at all. Money is the steam that 
makes the engine go ; but prayer is the fire that 
makes the steam. 

Indeed, further back than our gifts, it was 
prayer in the first place that made men mission- 
aries at all. As Mrs. J. H. Eandall said once : 
" Carey, Judson, Livingstone, Keith Falconer, 
Hannington, Paton, Fidelia Fiske, Ann Hassel- 
tine, the haystack heroes, the consecrated band 
of Moravian missionaries who went out from 
Herrnhut — all these first gave themselves to the 
'regions beyond,' and were inspired to do this 
while in secret prayer they poured out their souls 
to God for guidance and help." 

We do not pray enough for missions in our pri- 
vate prayers. They are crammed with eager pe- 
titions for ourselves, and forget the millions who 
are in so much greater need than we can ever be. 
They deal with the little area of our small lives, 
and do not enlarge us as they reach out to the 
ends of the earth. 

Nor do we pray enough for missions in our mis- 
sionary meetings. It is well to learn what is 
going on in missionary fields. Information is the 
match that lights the fire of prayer. But if the 
information, as so often happens, ends with itself, 
it is a match gone out ! 

God does hear prayer, and answer it. He de- 
lights in large prayers, prayers as large as His 
thoughts for the world. He delights in definite 
prayers, that name men and needs. He delights 
in expectant prayers, that are sure they will win 
results, even in the antipodes. Let such prayers 
be ours. 

107 



Burden-Bearing and 
Burden-Sharim 



No man liveth to himself alone. We all need 
one another. The world is daily coming closer 
together, bound ever in a more necessary and 
intricate net of mutual helpfulness. Wireless 
telegraphy is the latest agent that is knitting the 
nations. Dr. Conwell says of it: " Marconi is 
saying to Russia, ' You need the United States ' ; 
and to the United States, ' You need Russia, and 
I will work and bring you together. ' That is 
Christianity." 

It is Christ's teaching — and who else ever 
really taught it % — that nothing is given us merely 
for our own use. Said Bacon : " The real use of 
all knowledge is this : that we should dedicate 
the reason which was given us by God to the use 
and advantage of man." That is true not only 
of our reason, but of all our powers. We have 
nothing, absolutely nothing, that was not given 
us, and it was given us on condition of steward- 
ship — that we are to use it as a sacred trust for 
the benefit of the world. 

Indeed, this is the secret of possession. c i What 
I gave, I had; what I kept, I lost." He who 
saveth his life shall lose it. There is no better 
way to help one's self than to help others. This 
truth is well taught in the following description 
of two days : 

" A perfect day ! I tried to hold it fast ; 
To make each hour my own, and sip its sweets 
As if it were a flower, and I its bee. 
No one should come between me and my joy, 

108 



Burden-Bearing and Burden-Sharing 

My will should rule my actions for one day. 
Ah, yes ! it slipped away, its secret kept, 
And hid from me behind the sunset clouds. 

" Another day : ' God help me use the hours ! ' 
I said, 'and let Thy will be done, not mine.' 
I watched if might be some one needed help, 
If I might speak a word of cheer, or give 
A hand, or even softly step where wounds 
Were aching. Day of sweet revealing ! when 
It passed, it left its perfume in my heart." 

Paul puts strangely together (in Galatians 6), 
within a few lines of each other, the seemingly 
contradictory precepts, "Bear ye one another's 
burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ," and 
" Every man shall bear his own burden." Here, 
however, there is no real contradiction. The best 
way to bear another man's burden is lovingly to 
help him bear it himself. Burden-bearing, phys- 
ical and spiritual, is the only way to strength. 
Charity workers nowadays are wisely taking for 
their motto, "Not alms, but a friend." Says 
Washington Gladden : ' ' The law of sympathy, 
the law of self-help — they are not twain, but one." 
You can best help another by getting him to help 
himself. 

One more thought : Allow yourself to be 
helped. You need it, and others need to help 
you. Dr. J. E. Miller wisely says, "We can 
never make the most and best of life if we refuse 
to be taught by others than ourselves." Not 
only receive criticism, but invite it. If you have 
a friend brave enough to tell you your faults, 
thank God for him every day ; he is your most 
precious earthly possession. You can never help 
others as much as you should unless you are 
humbly eager to be helped by others. 

109 



Not Ashamed of the Gospel 



" Speech is silver, silence is gold." We often 
hear maxims to that effect. Says Bruy ere : ' ' We 
seldom repent of speaking little, very often of 
speaking too much." 

Now such exhortations, admirably useful when 
speech is foolish or malicious, are contemptible 
and false when speech is, or should be, the bold, 
loving, helpful testimony for Jesus Christ. 
Speech then is golden, and silence is pewter. It 
is then that we often have sad cause to repent of 
speaking too little. 

A writer in the Chicago Standard says : 
"'Therefore let thy words be few.' But that 
does not mean to be entirely mum. Some people 
seem to have read no further in their Bibles than 
this. They have not seen the 'Go, tell.' Do 
they stop to think that they may be rashly silent 
as well as rashly clamorous f In this age of the 
world, and with the opportunities and importu- 
nities for testimony given, is any one exonerated 
from speaking for his King % " 

Talmage said forcibly once: "You cannot 
afford to be silent when God and the Bible and 
the things of eternity are assailed. Your silence 
gives consent to the bombardment of your Father's 
house. You allow a slur to be cast on your 
mother's dying pillow. In behalf of the Christ, 
who for you went through the agonies of assassi- 
nation on the rocky bluff back of Jerusalem, you 
dared not face a sickly joke." 

At the time when Paul declared that he was 
"not ashamed of the gospel," Christianity was 

110 



Not Ashamed of the Gospel 

weak and despised. Its followers were few and 
lowly, mostly slaves and ignorant. If lie was not 
ashamed of it then, why should we be, now that 
Christian nations are the most powerful of earth, 
and Christian men the wisest and richest and most 
influential, and to belong to Christ's church is 
universally counted a credit? 

But Paul's "not ashamed" is an example of 
that common figure of speech that palpably under- 
states in order to emphasize. His readers knew 
well that Christ was Paul's one glory. u Not 
ashamed"? Why, he was superbly proud of 
Christ. He wore Him as his crown. He was 
Christ's ambassador to the nations. 

Deep into Paul's heart had sunk these words 
of his Lord: " Whosoever shall be ashamed of 
me and of my works, of him shall the Son of man 
be ashamed." Paul would have Christ proud of 
him, and he was proud of Christ. 

The dumb devil has had Christian lips long 
enough. Every Christian should be a doer ; but 
he must also be a speaker. Out of the mouth 
confession is made unto salvation — our salvation, 
and the salvation of the world. 

We must be modest in our testimony. Our 
speeches are short and very simple. We are not 
to care for the words that man's wisdom teaches. 
Let it be our wish only to obtain the fulfillment of 
this prayer : 

" Lord, I beseech that I may teach 
With love like Thine to me ; 
And so, with wise and loving speech 
Bring many a heart to Thee." 



Ill 



Minor Moralities 



Strictly speaking, there are no " minor " 
moralities. On occasion, the least law of con- 
duct may become of permanent importance, and 
observance or non-observance of it may control a 
destiny. For example, promptness may be con- 
sidered a "minor 77 morality; but not in the 
case of a physician. Cleanliness is usually 
held to be a "minor" morality; but one's 
bodily condition affects so profoundly one's 
spiritual condition that a popular proverb puts 
cleanliness next to godliness. This understand- 
ing of the matter should run through all our 
thinking, that every "minor" morality is likely 
to become a "major" one. 

First, that same promptness. "Procrastina- 
tion is the thief of time," — and of more. It 
makes away with peace of mind, with mental 
vigor, with all kinds of success. " I wish," said 
Nevius, "it were no worse than a thief. It is a 
murderer ; and that which it kills is the im- 
mortal soul." Decision of character is needed 
for time and eternity. "Faith in to-morrow in- 
stead of Christ," said Dr. Cheever, "is Satan's 
nurse for man's perdition." 

Another "minor" morality closely allied to 
the "major" ones is the cleanliness just 
mentioned. Eumford declared: "So great is 
the effect of cleanliness upon man, that it ex- 
tends even to his moral character. Virtue never 
dwelt long with filth ; nor do I believe there ever 
was a person scrupulously attentive to cleanli- 
ness who was a consummate villain." 

Politeness is a very large "minor" morality. 

112 



Minor Moralities 

Witherspoon finely defined politeness as "real 
kindness kindly expressed, " and Lord Chatham 
said it is " benevolence in trifles, or the prefer- 
ence of others to ourselves in the daily occur- 
rences of life." Chesterfield, that traditional 
model of politeness, asserted that "it simply 
consists in treating others just as you love to be 
treated yourself" ; that is the Golden Eule. 

Hospitality is usually ranked as a "minor" 
morality, and yet Lavater said, ' ' As you receive 
the stranger, so receive your God." " I was a 
stranger and ye took me in" — that is one of the 
chief blessings Christ will pronounce on the day 
of judgment. If, as some fear, the grace of 
hospitality is perishing among us, it is a serious 
matter, for it means that we are growing selfish. 
As we entertain strangers, we entertain, oh ! so 
many angels, unawares. 

And what shall we say of patience t Franklin, 
who so well exemplified the virtue, said of it : 
"He that can have patience can have what he 
will." "Endurance," said Lowell, "is the 
crowning quality, and patience all the passion of 
great hearts." It is often shown best in lowly 
lives, but none the less it is godlike. 

There are many moralities that deserve a 
place in the list, but I will name only one more — 
moderation. One of Joubert's sentences of in- 
sight is this: "Moderation consists in being 
moved as angels are moved." It consists in see- 
ing life in its true proportions, not despising the 
world, yet not resting upon it, and always re- 
membering the vital things. "Let your moder- 
ation" — such moderation as this — "be known to 
all men." 

113 



Our National Heritage 



Dean Farrar once asked the question, 
"Upon what does the progress of nations de- 
pend?" and answered it in these noble words : 
' ' There are two things which every man and 
woman in the world can do. They can preserve 
the wealth of noble thoughts and purposes, which 
is our chief heritage from the great ones of the 
past, and they can aim at the continuous useful- 
ness of setting a high and pure example, so that 
they may be ready at any moment, if the sudden 
call of God should come to them, to do deeds 
which shall leave behind them an aroma of im- 
mortal memory. It is only thus— first, by the 
mighty achievements of great men, and next, by 
the steadfast faithfulness of the undistinguished — 
that the true progress of nations and of the world 
is carried on." 

Those two sentences are a sufficient programme 
of patriotism : preserve the best of the past, 
utilize it in a worthy present. Our national 
heritage is not fine buildings, for they decay ; 
nor even broad farms, rich mines, and splendid 
forests, for these may become unproductive. 
Ours is a heritage of ideas that are immortal, 
and that grow more valuable with age. Some 
nations, like Greece, Holland, and Switzerland, 
whose leagues are most contracted, yet have re- 
ceived the richest of heritages. 

There was once displayed in a jeweler's win- 
dow a banner beautifully wrought in flashing 
gems. Every color was brilliantly there, and 
the tiny flag seemed made of solid light. It was 

XH 



Our National Heritage 

a true symbol of our nation, whose glory is made 
up of innumerable jewels, each of them the life 
of a devoted citizen. As we live our lives faith- 
fully, we separate citizens, the great country 
will be prosperous and happy ; and not other- 
wise. 

Banners have been made like that jeweled 
marvel, save that the bits of color have been 
furnished by electric lights. There were thou- 
sands of them, but every one was needed. Here 
and there was a bulb that gave no light, and the 
gap it left was very striking. Every citizen, 
however humble, is needed in a free country, 
and it is impossible to say what momentous issue 
may hang upon his personality. For example, 
at one time in the State of Massachusetts, the 
renowned scholar, orator, and statesman, Edward 
Everett, lost the governorship through the vote 
of a young man casting his first ballot. 

The heritage of money, house, and lands that 
we receive personally, we cherish carefully. 
How about our share of the national heritage? 
Do we really make it ours ? The whole of it be- 
longs to every citizen. By study of history, by 
thoughtful observation, by wide-awake action, 
do we actually grasp our national heritage ? 

If we do, how it enriches and enlarges us ! 
The true patriot is twice a man. He lives once 
to himself and once to the world. He is the 
incarnation of a mighty past. Let us all pray 
this prayer by Julia Ward Howe : 

"So may ancestral conquests live 
In what we have and what we give, 
And the great boons we hold from Thee 
Tarn to enrich humanity." 

115 



The Imperialism of 
Christianity 



It does not often realize it, but nevertheless 
the Church of Christ is imperial. It was founded 
for world-wide dominion, and it has never lost 
the ideal. That ideal, appearing so preposterous 
when entertained by a dozen Jewish peasants, 
has now reached not only possibility but almost 
certainty. 

Napoleon, the world-conqueror, is reported to 
have said during his exile at St. Helena: "My 
armies have forgotten me even while living, even 
as the Carthaginian army forgot Hannibal. Such 
is our power. A single battle lost crushes us, 
and adversity scatters our friends. The progress 
of the faith and the government of the Church 
are a perpetual miracle. Nations pass away, 
thrones crumble, but the Church remains." 

Every Christian will hold his head higher as he 
realizes this. He is a citizen of no transient 
empire. As soon as a man joins the church he is 
invested with somewhat of the dignity and power 
of an eternal and universal institution. Let us 
realize the truth of Dwight Williams' lines : 

"From sea to sea 
Shall His dominion be, 
According to the promise written ; 
And He in scorn and insult smitten 
Shall hear the welcome salutations 
Of long-oppressed and weary nations ; 
And He shall rule 
Star-crowned and beautiful. ' ' 

But when we think of our more than one 
hundred Protestant sects and the great Greek and 

116 



The Imperialism of Christianity 

Roman churches, and when we remember our 
manifold diversities of creed, this coming time 
when Christ's one Church shall fill the whole 
earth seems far-off indeed. Dr. Behrends, in 
that wonderful address delivered just before his 
death in the presence of the Ecumenical Mis- 
sionary Conference at New York, urged that the 
world-wide empire for which Christianity is des- 
tined will never come till two things happen : 
there must be a fusion of churches, there must 
be a fusion of creeds ; we must believe together, 
and we must work together. And he insisted 
that foreign missions will compel this simplifica- 
tion of our faith and this federation of our forces. 
At any rate, however it is to be brought about, 
no Christian can doubt that it must be brought 
about. A true Christian who has an ideal short 
of this imperial thought never has existed and 
never will exist. "We, as well as Hansen's 
men," says Alexander Maclaren, " ought to feel 
that the name of the ship that we are on is the 
'Frani' ('Forward,') and should take the dying 
words of the Roman Catholic martyr missionary 
saints for ours: 'Amplius, amplius' ('further, 

further afield')." 

But there is danger lest these large consider- 
ations may lead us to neglect the little endeavors 
through which alone the great results will come. 
" If I had the choice, ' ' said Moody, ' ' of preaching 
like Gabriel, swaying men at my will, without 
winning them to Christ, or taking them one by 
one in private and leading them to the truth, 
how gladly would I choose the latter. ' ' Such quiet 
ways are the ways of most of us, but — the King- 
dom " cometh without observation." 

117 



The Right Use of Ability 



First, get the ability. Many talk about the use 
of ability who have no ability to use. They 
have the seeds of it implanted in them by their 
Maker, who never formed a man without a des- 
tiny ; but they are letting the seeds decay. 

The first use of ability — any ability — is to get 
more ability. A man who is not growing can- 
not help others to grow. As Bayard Taylor 
finely sings : 

' ' He who would lead must first himself be led ; 
Who would be loved, be capable of love 
Beyond the utmost he receives ; who claims 
The rod of power must first have bowed his 

head, 
And, being honored, honor what's above. 
This know the men who leave the world their 
names. ' ' 

First, get the ability ; then, consecrate it. To 
consecrate one's ability is to devote it to the high- 
est uses God opens before it. For instance, to 
quote Rev. Clarence A. Vincent, u Henry Ward 
Beecher would have made a splendid auctioneer. 
His keen wit, his commanding voice, his great 
body, his striking face and head, his power over 
men, would have made him a prince at the block. 
The sale of the young slave-woman from his 
pulpit one Sunday morning proves what he could 
have been, but it would have been a crime for 
him to do it. His wit was to illumiDate great 
themes ; his voice to summon men to God and 
noble action ; his face to shine with great emotion, 

118 



The Right Use of Ability 

and his brain to think world-shaping thoughts ; 
and his power over men to be exerted for man 
and not for money. 7 ' 

Use yonr ability as a trust. Get to thinking 
of it as something apart from yourself. You are 
an underworker of the Master Carpenter, and 
your abilities are the tools He lends you to work 
with. 

Use your ability boldly. It is more than 
a dead tool. If it has been dedicated to God, it 
is like the tools in the fairy story, which guide 
the hand that uses them. 

Use your ability freely. Freely you received 
it. Did the artist buy his talent in any store, or 
the musician pay so many dollars for her genius ? 
Freely give it. 

Use your ability happily. Man's power is the 
only power in the universe that mopes. Electric- 
ity never sulks. Gravitation is always briskly 
ready. Sunlight laughs as it runs on its errands. 
Good cheer multiplies talent many fold. 

Listen to the stirring words of Dr. Babcock : 

" Be strong! 
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift, 
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift ; 
Shun not the struggle — face it ; 'tis God's gift. 

' ' Be strong ! 
Say not the days are evil. Who's to blame? 
And fold the hands and acquiesce — oh, shame ! 
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name. 

"Be strong ! 
It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong, 
How hard the battle goes, the day how long ; 
Faint not— fight on ! To-morrow comes the song." 

119 



Children of God 



Who does not know who Helen Keller is, the 
marvelous deaf, blind, and dumb girl? Thus 
fearfully bereft from babyhood, yet she has learned 
to speak, and she has obtained an excellent edu- 
cation in Radcliffe College. 

Until she was six years old, Hellen Keller was 
told nothing of religious matters. At that age 
she was taken to Phillips Brooks, and very ten- 
derly and lovingly did the great preacher tell the 
little girl of God, her Father in heaven. 

When the simple sermon was over, Helen said, 
" I knew that before. I think I have always 
known it. 77 

So it seems that the knowledge of the Father is 
a natural instinct of the soul, a longing created 
within the human race, never satisfied till Christ 
came, but since that time growing more confident 
and blessed every year. 

Some would have us believe that this concep- 
tion of God as our Father and of men as His 
children is a thought that belittles the infinite 
Ruler of the universe. No better answer can be 
made to such objectors than was made to Collins, 
the skeptic, who once asked an untaught farmer, 
" Is your God a great or a little God 1 " 

"He is both," was the reply. 

" Why, how can that be % " 

"He is so great," the farmer answered, "that 
the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him ; and 
so little that He can dwell in my heart." 

It is necessary to get a conception of God's 

120 



Children of God 

power ; without it we shall not be strong our- 
selves. But far more necessary is it to gain the 
thought of God's love. What is it to know one's 
self the child of God ? It is to enjoy the most 
exalted companionship at all times. It is to have 
absolutely no fear or worries for the future. It 
is to receive all men as brothers. It is to be con- 
fident of perfect guidance. It is to be sure of 
power adequate to all our needs. It is to have 
heaven on earth while we live, and an eternity of 
heaven hereafter. 

How may we become children of God 1 We 
are children of God already. We may have wan- 
dered from the Father's house, but we are His 
children, even in the "far country." 

How may we know that we are children of 
God, entering consciously, by intimate daily ex- 
perience, into this blessed relationship % By doing 
God's will. That is the way a child comes to 
know his earthly father. He must walk in the 
way his father marks out for him, refraining from 
what his father forbids and doing what his father 
commands. In that way he comes to realize his 
father's wisdom and power and love. Just so, 
the more closely we live with God, studying His 
revealed will for men and conforming our lives 
to it, the more certainly shall we know Him to be 
our Father. Then we can make our own these 
happy words of Marianne Farningham's : 

" Our Father knows, our Father cares — 

How great Thy gentleness ! 
We dare to live, and dare to die, 

Who are not fatherless. 
Dear Father, whom we cannot see, 
Our life is glad because of Thee." 

121 



Individual Work for Christ 



"The vast majority of Christians in this day 
are useless," stoutly declared Dr. Talmage. 
" The most of the Lord's battalion belong to the 
reserve corps. The most of the crew are asleep 
in the hammocks. The most of the metal is under 
the hills." 

If this is so — and there is much truth in it — 
then it is a terribly sad condition of affairs, since 
Christians are the salt of the earth, and if they 
lose their savor, wherewith shall the world be 
salted t By virtue of his calling, his powers, his 
blessings, and his opportunities, there is no one 
on earth that should be so fiercely active as the 
Christian ; and Christians are active enough, but 
is it always about their Father's business 1 

One of the tombs best worth seeing in St. PauPs 
Cathedral bears these noble words: "Major- 
General Gordon, who at all times, everywhere, 
gave his strength to the weak, his substance to 
the poor, his sympathy to the suffering, his heart 
to God ; died at Khartoum, 26th January, 1885. ' > 
Over the grave of Alexander Mackay, that 
ingenious, undaunted, mechanic-missionary to 
Uganda, are set the words : "A Doer of the 
Word. 7 7 Now these are splendid epitaphs. How 
can we earn their like ? 

Not by proxy work. Not by delegating all our 
good deeds to a committee, a pastor, a board or a 
society. We must support these ; they vastly en- 
large the churches' power for good. But they 
can never take the place of individual service. 

122 



Individual Work for Christ 

A discouraged young doctor was visited by his 
farmer father. u I'm not getting along at all," 
said the young man. The father sat near that 
morning and watched his son care for twenty- 
five unfortunates in the " Free Dispensary." "I 
thought you said you were not getting along? " 
he inquired. "Idid," was the reply 5 " there's 
no money in this. " " No money ? ' ' shouted the old 
man. " Why, if I had helped twenty -five people 
in a month as you have in one morning, I'd bless 
God that my life counted for something. Keep 
right on, and I'll gladly work on the farm to sup- 
port you." 

We are all so slow to see what this old farmer 
saw, namely, that the only life worth living is a 
life of helpfulness, and that the best kind of help- 
fulness springs from personal contact. Lady 
Holland was constantly complaining because she 
had nothing to occupy her time. One day she 
uttered her characteristic lament in the presence 
of the poet Eogers, who gave her some sarcastic 
but valuable advice: "Try something new, 
Lady Holland ; try doing a little good." There 
is no ennui in a life of Christian service. Every 
day is full of fresh interest. Every night is full 
of peace. 

Let us all adopt for our own this prayer by the 
ill-fated Maltbie D. Babcock, who so beautifully 
exemplified its spirit in his life : 

" O Lord, I pray 

That for this day 
I may not swerve 

By foot or hand 

From Thy command — 
Not to be served, but to serve." 

123 



Religion and Patriotism 



At the battle of Modder River, in the South 
African war, a number of Canadians were killed. 
The brother of one of these slain soldiers was a 
merchant in Montreal. On receipt of the sad 
news he telegraphed to the governor-general of 
Canada, and asked to be appointed, at his own 
expense, in his brother's place. 

This stirring incident illustrates one of our 
duties toward our country — we must be ready to 
die for her. And this not only in war, but we 
must be ready for her sake to oppose angry and 
desperate criminals, or wear out our lives in toil- 
some service. The only questions are whether she 
needs our lives, and in what way she needs them. 

The story is told of a Spartan mother that she 
inquired eagerly of the result of a battle just 
fought. u All your five sons are slain,' 7 was the 
reply. " Unhappy wretch," answered she, "I 
did not ask you about my children, but about 
my country." " All's well with that," said the 
soldier. i l Then, ' ' answered the heroic mother, 
1 i let those mourn that are miserable. My coun- 
try is safe, and I am happy." 

Yes, every true patriot is self-forgetful. When 
the nation's interests are at stake, he takes no 
thought of his money -getting or his reputation - 
getting or even of his dear ones and his home. 
u First things first," and his country is one of 
the first things. 

A true patriot is humble. His country, he 

124 



Religion and Patriotism 

knows, is made up of land and water, trees and 
hills and houses, but even more is it made up of 
people. He cannot trust and honor his country 
without trusting and honoring its people. He 
walks with humility, therefore, before the common 
will, and does not lightly or arrogantly set him- 
self in opposition to it. 

At the same time, the true patriot is proud. 
He dreams of his country's triumphs as if they 
were his own. He exults in her every achieve- 
ment. He cons her resources. He pores over 
her history. His ambitions for her surpass his 
ambitions for himself. 

Above all, the true patriot must be religious. 
He cannot sacrifice himself for his native land 
without religion, for the spirit of religion is sac- 
rifice. Without religion he will lack constancy 
to die for her and strength to live for her. With- 
out religion he will be blind to her chief glories 
and loftiest possibilities. The man of a godlike 
faith, and he alone, can make his own these noble 
words of Whittier's : 



" Our thought of thee is glad with hope, 
Dear country of our love and prayers 
Thy way is down no fatal slope, 
But up to freer sun and airs. 

"The fathers sleep, but men remain 
As true and wise and brave as they ; 
Why count the loss without the gain ? 
The best is that we have to-day. 

" Oh, land of lands ! to thee we give 
Our love, our trust, our service free ; 
For thee thy sons shall nobly live, 
And at thy need shall die for thee." 

125 



True Philanthropy 



That topic implies that there is a false philan- 
thropy, and there is. The same deeds may be 
prompted by ostentation as by brotherly love. 
The obstinate purpose to propagate some peculiar 
tenet may lead to missionary effort quite as ex- 
tensive as the longing, for the world's sake, to 
spread abroad Christ' s truth. Rivalry with some 
other man may lead to emulation of his good 
deeds. 

We need to scan our benefactions with care, 
therefore, to learn whether they are real benevo- 
lences, whether the will goes with the deed and 
vivifies it. Of course, great gifts may do great 
good in spite of an unworthy motive, yet, so far 
as the giver is concerned, better a dollar given in 
the spirit of love than a million dollars given 
without it. 

How can we get this love for men, this philan- 
thropy % In the first place, we must know men. 
Without the knowledge of men's needs it is as 
impossible to help them as it is for a disciple of 
Spencer to pray to his God whose name is Un- 
thinkable. If Christ is the corner-stone of mis- 
sions, information is the first foundation course. 
If every church member read his missionary 
magazine every month, and added thereto each 
month a missionary biography, not only would 
the general intelligence of the church be decidedly 
raised, but it would for the first time adequately 
set itself about its great task of winning the world. 

In the second place, true philanthropy is im- 

126 



True Philanthropy 

possible without actual contact with nieu. Mis- 
sions require Boards for their proper management 
— societies, committees, secretaries, treasurers. 
But unless the church members in some way get 
into personal touch with some one missionary 
and some one sin burdened soul, mission treas- 
uries will run dry and mission Boards will be 
unsupported. There must be love of one soul 
before there can be love of souls. 

And in the third place, true philanthropy is 
impossible without self-denial. No man can 
serve two masters. No man can at the same 
time serve self and some other man. Martin the 
soldier was setting forth gayly from Amiens, 
when a beggar, the cold wintry air chilling him 
through his rags, asked an alms. Martin had no 
money, but with a happy smile he drew his sword, 
cut in two his handsome cloak, and gave the beg- 
gar half. That night the soldier dreamed he saw 
Christ in heaven wearing that parted garment. 
"Who gave Thee Thy cloak?" he heard the 
angels ask ; and to his rapture the Lord replied, 
' l My brother gave it to me. " So it was that the 
soldier became St. Martin, the beloved Bishop of 
Tours. 

That is the test of our brother-love : what are 
we sharing with our brother ? What does phi- 
lanthropy cost us? Are we simply saying, "I 
am sorry," and putting our pocket handkerchiefs 
to our eyes, or are we proving our sorrow with 
foot and hand and purse ? No one is a complete 
man who is wrapped up in himself. He is like a 
lamp never lighted or a furnace without fire. 



127 



A Strong Weak Man 



There is a Samson in every one — possible 
power, possible weakness ; a judge, an under- 
ling ; a warrior, a captive ; a hero, a slave ; a 
Nazarite, a voluptuary ; keen-sighted, blind. 

Every time we yield to a sinful impulse, we 
confirm the lower Samson $ every time we con- 
quer an evil desire, we strengthen the nobler 
Samson. 

The world is full of Delilahs. There is no 
need to seek them out, that we may try our 
strength with them ; they press upon us at every 
turn. They are fair to the eye and deceitful to 
the mind. If you want to recognize your real 
temptations, do not look among the things you 
dislike, but among your desires, your enjoyments, 
your affections. 

Nothing can conquer the Delilahs except "the 
expulsive power of a new affection." Nothing 
can change our weakness into strength, but using 
for God the little strength we have. When 
Samson used his strength for God, he was a 
hero. When he thought his strength would 
endure a moment's parley with evil, he fell. 

Therefore it is in the daily routine, and not in 
large events, that our weakness is to be built up 
into power. A slender girl, who goes quietly 
about her humble tasks, making home a sweet 
place, cooking healthful food, gathering up the 
dust, mending torn garments, and healing torn 
hearts with sympathy and love, is stronger than 
Samson ; and when the great crises come, she is 
more to be trusted than he. Thomas Bailey Al- 
drich has put this truth in a beautiful parable : 

128 



A Strong Weak Man 

'* Manoah's son, in his blind rage malign, 
Tumbling tbe temple down upon his foes, 
Did no such feat as yonder delicate vine 
That day by day untired holds up a rose. ' ' 

The secret of it all is in the soul, the mind. A 
man's strength or weakness does not lie in ex- 
ternals, in muscles or learning, in oratory or 
inventive skill. The deep things of character 
alone uphold against the deep things of tempta- 
tion. As it is not on the surface of the body and 
in the light of day that the battle is fought be- 
tween our physical existence and the crafty 
microbes of disease, but the contest is decided 
far within, and our best defence against those 
insidious enemies is merely what is called u a 
good constitution," so it is no exterior combat 
that wins for the soul its spiritual life or its 
eternal death. " As a man thinketh in his heart, 
so is he." 

In one of his masterly sonnets, Lloyd Mifflin 
has brought out the lesson of Samson's life : 



u Bent upon love, and beautiful as day 
Samson the youth to Timnath passed along; 
Musing of her, he hummed a desert song — 
When lo! a lion barred his onward way. 
"Who would be victor in the unequal fray? 
He thought of love, and laughed that he was strong, 
And conquered. Little did he deem, ere long, 
That lion Passion him would heartless slay. 
Now many a man in youth's supremest hour 
Who fells the lions in his path, will find 
Some dread Delilah, as the years entice; 
Shorn of his will and of his pristine power, 
He — following the primrose path of vice — 
Falls with the falling temple of his mind! " 

129 



Trusting Christ 



Joseph Addison, at the outset of his career, 
was sailing from France to Italy, when his vessel 
was overtaken by a storm so violent that the 
captain himself gave up all for lost. They were 
brought, however, safely to port ; whereupon the 
poet wrote his immortal hymn beginning : 

1 ' How are Thy servants blest, O Lord ! 
How sure is their defence ! 
Eternal wisdom is their guide, 
Their help Omnipotence." 

It is the storms of life that bring us to a 
knowledge of God and a firm reliance upon 
His goodness. If we never undertake hard 
things, if we never breast the waves, we shall 
never feel the everlasting arms underneath. 

That is why we must trust Christ for strength. 
We cannot long strive to do His will without 
encountering obstacles, even perils. Worldli- 
ness will oppose us, sloth, men's opinions, our 
own lower ambitions, the active hostility of the 
evil. "I can do all things," said Paul, "in 
Him that strengtheneth me." He could not 
have said that until he had attempted all things. 

The Christian wants to know just one thing 
about a proposed course of action. He does not 
inquire, "Is it easy? politic? safe? profitable? 
popular?" He asks merely, " Is it God's will 
for me?" He has taken to heart Longfellow's 
couplet : 

" Do thy duty, that is best; 
Leave unto thy Lord the rest ! " 

With this principle to guide us, we can never 

130 



Trusting Christ 

go too far. The Chevalier Bayard, that l i knight 
without reproach or fear/ 7 was once led by his 
impetuous courage for so long a distance in front 
of his victorious host that he alone followed the 
fleeing foe into their citadel and was captured. 
But in recognition of his great valor they re- 
leased him. There is never any real danger 
when we " follow the Gleam," when we pursue 
God's ideal for us. Blessed indeed is he, as 
Lowell sings, "who dares to be in the right — 
with two or three ! ' ' 

The danger lies all in the opposite direction — 
behind us. When we reach the spirit world, 
we shall see clearly — God grant it be not in un- 
dying regret ! — how sad was our defeat when we 
chose what men call safety and ease in preference 
to what Christ calls peace and security. Men 
that would find their lives, in popularity, luxury, 
wealth, lose them lamentably and irretrievably. 
Men that gladly lose their lives, in difficult, 
trustful endeavor, they alone find them. 

And finally, it is only by a constant apprentice- 
ship in faith, exercised through small events and 
daily duties, that we are enabled to meet the 
severe tests which poverty, sickness, loneliness 
or death brings them, with equanimity and 
strength. Wordsworth, that Christian poet, saw 
this clearly and wrote : 

1 ' One adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists — one only: an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power, 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good. ,, 

131 



Confessing Christ 



When Thorwaldsen was molding his sublime 
statue of Christ that stands in the ' ' Lady Church, ' ' 
Copenhagen, at first he represented our Lord 
with His hands uplifted as if pouring a blessing 
upon the world. The effect, however, though 
full of grace and beauty, was not what he desired, 
and the statue now shows Christ in the more 
divine attitude of entreaty, His hands outstretched 
as if He would cry to every sin-laden soul, 
" Come unto me, and rest." 

There can be no question as to Christ's desire 
for us. Not all the doubts of skeptics ever 
reached so far as to doubt this, that Christ longs 
with an unutterable longing for the allegiance of 
all men. " Do you doubt one instant," asked 
Phillips Brooks, " that His command is for you 
openly to own Him and declare before all the 
world that you are His servant t And have you 
done it?" 

It is indeed absurd to refuse this public con- 
fession of Christ on the plea that you do not want 
to set yourself up as better than others. That is 
precisely what you would not do by confessing 
Christ. It is by remaining out of the church 
that you virtually lay claim to superior goodness. 
A Christian is one that acknowledges sin, his 
weakness, his inability to help himself, and gladly 
confesses Christ as his supreme, indispensable 
Helper. A Christian's testimony is the same as 
was John Newton's more than a century ago : 

' ' If asked what of Jesus I think, 

Though still my best thoughts are but poor, 

132 



Confessing Christ 

I say, He's my meat and my drink, 

My life, and my strength, and my store 

My shepherd, my husband, my friend, 
My Saviour from sin and from thrall ; 

My hope from beginning to end, 
My portion, my Lord, and my all." 

So overwhelming is the maj ority of the wisest 
and best that have confessed Christ thus, that 
the burden of proof rests upon you to show why 
you also should not confess Him. 

And how to confess Him? 

First, by joining some branch of His Church. 
Without this, you will be a weak and inefficient 
Christian, even if you can remain a Christian at 
all. . Can you honestly doubt that Christ wants you 
to join His Church % 

Second, this initial confession must be con- 
tinued openly every day of your life. Dr. Miller 
tells of a young lady who had been paying a 
visit of several weeks at the house of friends, 
and then, it chancing to be communion Sabbath, 
had greatly surprised them by partaking of the 
elements. They had not supposed for a moment 
that she was a Christian. ' ' It ought never to be 
possible," adds Dr. Miller, "for a Christian to 
be in any house for a day without it being known 
by those who see his life, even without any dec- 
laration of the fact in words, that he belongs to 
Christ." 

For — and here is the solemn conclusion of it 
all — there will come a day when a word from 
Christ will mean more to us than all the worlds, 
and eternity for us will hang upon it. If we 
confess Him here, He will gladly confess us there. 
If we do not, He cannot. 

133 



If Christ Should Come 
To-morrow 



The Pope has a seal ring which makes his at- 
testation on official documents. Each Pope, since 
the thirteenth century, has worn such a ring, and 
each has had his own. To prevent forgery, after 
every Pope's death his ring is broken to pieces 
with a hammer, and an entirely different one is 
made for his successor. How often must the 
aged Leo, the last Pope, as he used this ring, have 
thought that perhaps on the morrow it would go 
under the destroying hammer ! 

Every soul is putting its seal daily on innumer- 
able deeds, and when we die the seal is broken. 
No one else can do what God wants us to do. 
We have no lease of the seal ; it may be taken 
from us the next hour. 

Dean Alford, that noble and brilliant English 
scholar, lay on his deathbed. As weeping dear 
ones gathered around he said cheerfully, "Put 
these words on my tombstone : i Deversorium 
viatoris Hierosolymam proficiscentis 1 — ' The inn of 
a traveler on his way to Jerusalem.' " The 
cradle is such an inn, the man's body is another, 
the grave is a third, and they are each for a 
single night. 

I have read of a business man who made it 
a pride to live in such fashion that if he should 
die at any night no slightest confusion or uncer- 
tainty would be discernible in his affairs by 

134 



If Christ Should Come To-Morrow 

whoever carae to take them up. Every document 
would be in its place, neatly labeled. The desk 
would be perfectly ordered. 

Such readiness in secular affairs is to be car- 
ried over into the things of the spirit. Let us 
not leave matters at loose ends there. Let us 
cast out every least sin. Let us banish every 
doubt. Let us improve every talent. Let us 
not lie down at night till in all points we are 
at peace with God and man. 

Much of our careless and foolish living is due 
to the repugnance with which we view death. 
We will not permit ourselves to think of it or 
others to talk of it. u You are so gloomy !" we 
cry. " Do let us converse on a more cheerful 
theme !" 

If death is a gloomy thought to you, your life 
is fundamentally wrong. Death means the 
consummation of a Christian's highest longing, 
to see his Lord. It means purification from earth 
stains and freedom from earth clogs. Over all 
that was dark in death, Christ has given us the 
victory j and if we fear death, it is because we do 
not yet know Christ as we should. 

Two thoughts, then, must be our constant com- 
panions, and we must attune our lives to them. 
One is the thought that Christ is always with us, 
His eye on all we do. The other is the thought 
that at any moment He may transfer us to the 
unseen land. If we become familiar with His 
presence, we shall not fear the transfer. We 
shall be glad to go anywhere with so dear a 
guide. 



136 



A New Year in Christ 



A dear little girl wrote out a set of New Year's 
resolutions, and signed them. Asked about them 
a fews days later, she naively replied, "I don't 
think they're much broken, but I guess most of 
'em are cracked." Broken or cracked — and 
broken all to bits in the case of most of us— 
these New Year's resolutions have a hard time 
of it before the young year has gone far on his 
way. 

But, nevertheless, we mean to make them ! We 
intend to take counsel of hope rather than fear. 
We shall believe in ourselves, because we believe 
in the God whose we are. Forgetting the things 
that are behind, with all their failures, and 
reaching forward to all good resolutions ahead of 
us, let us press toward the mark of a better year ! 

"It all wants forgiving," once said a Chris- 
tian worker on looking back over a year's liv- 
ing. True of the old year of us all ; but among 
its other gifts the new year holds full supplies 
of forgiveness. New Year's Day carries in one 
hand a sponge to erase the old, wrong writing, 
and in the other hand a pencil for fresh, brave 
sentences. 

u New mercies, new blessings, new light on the way ; 
New courage, new hope, and new strength for each day ; 
New wine in the chalice, new altars to raise, 
New fruits for thy Master, new garments of praise ; 
New gifts from His treasures, new smiles from His face ; 
New streams from His fountain of infinite grace ; 
New stars for thy crown, and new tokens of love; 
New gleams of the glory that waits thee above ; 
New light of His countenance, full and unpriced — 
All this be the joy of thy new year in Christ ! " 

136 



A New Year in Christ 

Those last two words of Miss HavergaPs, " in 
Christ," disclose the secret of the new year's joy. 
If your new year is "in Christ," it will be a 
"happy new year," its resolutions being kept. 
If it is not "in Christ," it will be a sad new 
year, for its good resolutions will be broken, since 
Christ alone can give us power to keep our good 
resolutions. 

And what is it to have our new year "in 
Christ " % It means far more than to know about 
Him and believe in Him ; the devils do that. It 
is even more than to do His will, for sometimes 
bad men do His will in spite of themselves. It 
means to love Christ. It means to make Christ 
the sum of our delight, the goal of our desires. It 
means so to draw near to Christ, and so to receive 
Christ to ourselves, that we two shall be verily 
one, He in us and we in Him. His new year, 
then, with all its blessedness and triumphs, will 
be our new year also. 

" I asked the New Year for some motto sweet, 
Some rule of life by which to guide my feet ; 
I asked and paused. He answered soft and low — 
' God's will to know.' 

'"Will knowledge, then, suffice, New Year? ' I cried. 
But ere the question into answer died 
The answer came, ' Nay, this remember too — 
God's will to do.' 

11 Once more I asked. ' Is there still more to tell ? ' 
And once again the answer sweetly fell, 
' Yea, this one thing all other things above — 
God's will to love. ' " 



137 



How to Listen 



Ears, and how to use theni ! That is better 
worth knowing than the use of the tongue, by as 
much as other folks are more numerous and wiser 
than we. It is even better worth knowing than 
the wise use of our eyes, since few things we see 
carry their own explanation or lesson on their 
face ; they must be interpreted. l c He that hath 
ears to hear, let him hear." 

Let him hear sermons. These preachers have 
given up their lives to the study and expression 
of the noblest of truths. We shall not get their 
message unless we go expecting a message, and 
recognizing the high character of the speakers. 
We shall be little profited unless we prepare our 
heart-soil by prayer, Bible-study, and meditation. 
It is as great an art to hear a sermon as to preach 
one. 

Then, let him hear his fellow -Christians. In 
no school is more to be learned than in Christian 
conversation, but that is a hard school to find. 
When you do discover, however, a man whose 
talk breathes the spirit of Christianity, whether 
it uses the technical terms of theology or not, 
talk much with him. Though you converse only 
of railroad stocks, you will talk religion. 

Then, let him hear what books have to say, and 
especially what the Bible has to say. Books are 
only the speech of men, in a permanent form, and 
in reading we are truly listening to the distant or 
the dead. In the first place, to choose our read- 
ing as carelessly as we do, and in the next place 
to read as heedlessly as we do, is almost as bad as 

138 



How to Listen 

to make haphazard selection among an apothe- 
cary's stock, and swallow the first drug we light 
upon. Never take up a book or paper without 
thinking, l ' Is this likely to be the message the 
God of my brain wants it to receive ? ' ' 

Finally, let him hear the Holy Spirit. God 
still talks to men, just as really as to Abraham 
or Moses or Paul. That is a tremendous thing to 
say, and the astonishing thing is that men assent 
to its truth in a matter-of-course way, and go on 
with lives untransformed by it. If men actually 
realized that by listening they could hear the 
voice of the Being who made them and will 
speedily call them to Himself, their ears would be 
tense with eagerness, and the clamor of the world 
would go by unheeded. 

To close our ears resolutely and completely to 
the world's appeal, urging us to live for money, 
or power, or fame, or ease, or pleasure. 

To open our ears with longing and confi- 
dence to the heavenly appeal, urging us to live 
for eternity, for God, for other men, for our best 
selves. 

To close our ears to worldly threats, prophesy- 
ing loss and suffering and failure if we follow high 
ideals, and promising success and joy if we follow 
'ideals only a little lower. 

To open our ears to absolute knowledge, dis- 
closing the future, foretelling the judgment, de- 
scribing the awards and punishments sure to come, 
and the just bases of each. 

Finally, to open our ears to the world' s great 
need, to allow no duty to summon us in vain and 
no cry for help to beat useless against us. 

All this is, having ears, to hear well. 

139 



Time and Pains for Christ 



The five foolish virgins were foolish, not be- 
cause of what they did, but because of what they 
failed to do. Their only sin, in the parable, was 
the sin of omission. We are likely to think of 
such sins as no sins at all, or at any rate as venial 
ones. Christ evidently teaches that they shut one 
out of heaven just as effectively as the open and 
aggressive sins. 

Not to spend time for Christ ! Not to take 
pains for Christ ! Forgetting our prayers, neg- 
lecting our Bible-study, too bashful for Chris- 
tian testimony, too reserved for Christian help- 
fulness ! Of these and such as these our Master 
has spoken those stern and fearful words, u He 
that is not for me is against me — against me." 

Does it seem unreasonable that when we are 
obeying somewhat, possibly obeying a great deal, 
a lack of full obedience should utterly condemn 
us ?. This principle, nevertheless, seems entirely 
reasonable in nature and in art. If the bridge 
failed by only a foot to reach the pier, no one 
would trust himself a foot upon it. If the water 
falls short of the boiling point by a fraction of a 
degree, no one expects steam or looks to see the 
engine move. If the wick in the wise virgin's 
lamp did not dip down in the oil, though it hung 
as close to its surface as might be, no one would 
be surprised when that lamp went out. Every- 
where, "a miss is as good as a mile," and lack 
of entire obedience means absolute failure. 

140 



Time and Pains for Christ 

Since this is so, how careful should we be, how 
heedful of God's requirements, how eager to lavish 
time and pains upon His services ! The swiftest 
promptness is none too prompt, the fullest meas- 
ure of strength is none too efficient, the most 
ardent energy is not over-zealous. 

Are we calculating with ourselves whether we 
have excuse enough to warrant our breaking 
away from that duty or this task ? Then we 
have already broken away from it. Are we wil- 
lingly persuading ourselves of our incapacity, and 
determinedly forgetting God's capacity? Then 
we are actually emptying the oil out of our lamps. 
Are we permitting the cares or pleasures of the 
world to engross our minds ? Then we must not 
complain if we are shut in to this world and shut 
out from the next. The five foolish virgins were 
doubtless busy enough with the non-essentials, 
the dresses they were to wear or the garlands 
upon their heads. They were doing so much 
that they forgot to do the one thing needful. 

Every year the world is growing more interest- 
ing, its politics more absorbing, its science more 
fascinating, its mammon more aggressive, its de- 
mands more importunate. There is ever-increas- 
ing need of mental balance, of a sane sense of 
proportion and of final values. Ask yourself, in 
regard to every demand upon your time and 
energy, "How long will this last? Does it lead 
to eternal results, or does it concern issues that, 
though gleaming with all iridescent hues, are 
transient . as bubbles in the sunshine?" The 
world is still divided into the foolish who live for 
time, and the wise who live for eternity. In 
which company are you ? 

141 



Growing Up for God 



"If there is one lesson more clear than an- 
other," says Rev. D. J. H. Ward, "it is that 
God means for humanity a life of growth." 
There is no such thing as leaping into ma- 
tured powers. ' ' There is no royal load to learn- 
ing,'' or to anything else. It is only through 
apprenticeship that one becomes master of a 
trade, from cobbling shoes to writing 4 ' In Memor- 
iam." Poets are made as well as born. So are 
men of noble characters and lofty deeds. 

" God might have stood the cedars on the hills, 

The strong night watchman by the sounding sea, 
Without the tardy growth from slender spires, 
To the crowned heads against the sunset fires ; 
But other plans had He. 

' ' He might have placed His children on a height. 
Strong men for God, His mission to fulfil, 
Without the upward climb, the baffled flight, 
The halting step slow mounting toward the light ; 
But such was not His will. 

"It pleased Him that in nature, or in grace, 

Seed-germ or soul, toward Him should all things 
grow. 
Keaching, aspiring, from beginnings small, 
Till the sweet day when Christ is all in all, 
And we His will shall know." 

Once a rich man was looking for an estate 
along the majestic Hudson Eiver on which to 
build his house. Horace Greeley asked him what 
he was going to build. His reply was : "It de- 
pends upon three things : first, what design I get 
from the architects ; second, what material I can 

142 



Growing Up for God 

secure with which to build it ; and third, what 
location I can find for it." 

It is just that way with a man in the building 
of his life. God, the great Architect, has a beau- 
tiful plan for him, and his first business is to dis- 
cover what the design is. Then he has to learn 
to use the materials God places within his reach, 
and to build in the situation where God puts him. 
The lives that fail to grow into strong and lovely 
buildings are those that fail in some of these par- 
ticulars. 

In a sermon on growth Dr. Charles M. Sheldon 
had this strong sentence : ' ' The sooner we 
wretched braggarts drop out of our vocabulary 
the word 'mine' and substitute the word 'Thine, 7 
the sooner may we expect to grow in the grace 
and knowledge of Jesus Christ." " Our wills are 
ours, to make them Thine" — I think Tennyson 
never wrote a wiser line than that. The secret of 
growth is obedience. 

If we wish to "grow up for God," then, the 
first thing is to study the Bible, to learn God's 
design for us. It is drawn there in clearest and 
fairest lines. The next thing is to commune 
much with God, that His power may enter our 
lives, as the inspiring warmth of the sun enters 
the seed, which without it would lie in the ground 
forever, only a seed. The third thing — and the 
last — is to reach out, as the seed does. Eeach 
out to the nearest material, and use it as God 
guides. Eeach out to the nearest task, and do it 
as God empowers. No one ever grew except by 
this humble, daily, trustful duty -doing ; and no 
one ever lived that way long without growing to 
be a giant ! 

143 



Spirit-Filled Christians 



The most wonderful event in all the past 
is the incarnation. To think that ' l the fulness of 
the Godhead " could enter a contracted human life, 
and walk about among men ! We forget God's 
vastness and our own littleness, or the marvel of 
the incarnation would be to us a perpetual 
astonishment. 

But if the incarnation is the most wonderful 
event of the past, surely the most wonderful event 
of the present is the continuation of the incarna- 
tion in the lives of Spirit-filled Christians, Chris- 
tians in whom God abides. Those hands that 
uphold the universe, those eyes that see all 
things, that mind to which all mysteries are an 
open book — this Power of powers is eager to 
enter our hands and eyes and mind, eager to 
guide them and give them force ! It is the most 
blessed fact that man can know. 

The Holy Spirit is ready to enter our lives 
with a great flood of love and energy. He is 
glad to l i open the windows of heaven, and pour 
you out a blessing." President Augustus H. 
Strong likens the coming of the Spirit to a rain 
he saw on the way from Carmel to Csesarea. 
1 L The. water seemed to descend in masses. Those 
exposed to it were drenched as if they had been 
plunged into the sea. Then I understood what 
the Psalmist meant by ' the river of God which 
is full of water. 7 " 

The Holy Spirit is ready to fill every corner of 
our lives. Bev. F. B. Meyer compares His com- 
ing to the outpouring of molten metal into a 
mold. There is the sand made ready, hollowed 

144 



Spirit-Filled Christians 

out, dark and empty. But now the sluice-gate is 
opened and the glowing metal rushes out and 
fills with its brilliancy and its assurance of future 
power and usefulness every corner of the mold. 

As we receive the Holy Spirit into our lives, 
our old evil habits fall away before Him. 
Dr. A. J. Gordon reminds us how some dead 
leaves stick fast to the branches, though all the 
storms of winter try to dislodge them. But when 
the sap begins to move in the spring, some day 
the leaves have all disappeared, pushed off by 
the swelling buds beneath. So it is with our 
sins as soon as we allow the life of God to course 
through our being. 

And when we have received the Holy Spirit, 
at once our tasks become easy for us. A new 
power irradiates us, born of a new joy. James 
Harvey says that before he received the Spirit of 
God, his work was done like the shooting of an 
arrow ; all the power came from his own puny 
arm. But after he received the Spirit, his work 
was done like the firing of a rifle-ball ; he had 
only to direct it, while all the force for a vastly 
greater flight was given without his labor by the 
powder. 

How strange that we will not take God at His 
word ! ' ' Lo, I am with you alway, ' ' said Christ. 
"Ask, and ye shall receive." Paul believed, 
and asked, and so received that he could exclaim 
triumphantly, "I can do all things through 
Christ which strengtheneth me." If we are liv- 
ing weak lives, and so unhappy and unfruitful 
lives, we have only to yield ourselves to God, 
and He will transform us into all power and joy 
and accomplishment. 

145 



Saying "Thank You" 
to God 



A skilful surgeon, by a marvelous operation, 
gave sight to a young woman who had been 
blind from birth. On a lovely morning they 
opened her window shutters, and for the first 
time she saw this beautiful earth. "Oh, won- 
derful ! wonderful ! ' ' she cried in rapture. 
11 Surely heaven cannot be made more glorious 
than this ! ' ' 

Let us ask ourselves how much we should have 
missed if we had been blind all our lives ; and 
have we ever thanked God for our eyes f Or if 
we had been deaf all our lives ; and have we 
ever thanked God for our hearing % Or if we had 
been paralytic ; and have we ever thanked God 
for hands and feet 1 

Nay, is it not possible, and even probable, 
that the eyes of our souls have through all our 
lives been blind to more than one world of loveli- 
ness ? The world of self-sacrifice — have we ever 
seen its azure sky, its towering mountain peaks f 
The world of duty, the world of generosity, the 
world of Bible truth, the world of prayer, the 
world of Christian peace — as these are named, 
do memories of rich prospects crowd upon our 
minds, visions familiar and dear yet ever chang- 
ing in their enchantments ! If not, pray to the 
Lord of Bartimams for the unsealing of your 
eyes. 

And how, if we have these great reasons for 
thanksgiving, shall we express our gratitude to 
God? 

146 



Saying " Thank You " to God 

In the first place, by a well ordered life. 
Washington, in the first Thanksgiving Day 
proclamation, set forth this truth in his stately 
phrase, bidding his people u unite in most 
humbly offering our prayers and supplications to 
the great Lord and Ruler of nations, and beseech 
Him to pardon our national and other transgres- 
sions ; to enable us all, whether in public or 
private stations, to perform our several and 
relative duties properly and punctually." The 
doing of duty is the best Te Deum. 

Then, we are to thank God by a trusting, 
peaceful mind. As Phillips Brooks said with 
reference to Thanksgiving Day, "We want to 
trust God with a fuller trust, and so at last to 
come to that high life when we shall ' be careful 
for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and 
supplication, with thanksgiving, let our request 
be made known unto God,' for that, and that 
alone, is peace." By our worry, if we worry, we 
give the lie to our thanksgiving. 

And finally, we are to thank God by words. 
" Never go to God for new blessings," said 
Joseph Parker, " before you have given Him a 
receipt for the old ones." We expect others to 
say " Thank you" if we only pass them the 
bread at table ; and as often as we pass it. How 
often and how audibly do we say " Thank you" 
to God? 

It is a minor consideration, and yet well worth 
thinking about : If we treated a friend's gifts as 
we constantly treat God's, how long would it be 
before our friend, in disgust, would cease his gifts 
altogether % And can we blame God if His gifts 
cease to fall upon the ungrateful 1 

147 



God's Promises 



One dark night a boat was shipwrecked on a 
rocky coast. One of the passengers escaped to 
tiie rocks and began to climb up the wave-beaten 
cliff. But as far as he went the waves pursued 
hiin, and he was afraid that the rising tide would 
drown him. He was in terrible despair, when 
suddenly his hand touched in the darkness a soft, 
Umbrella- shaped growth. He knew at once that: 
it was the samphire, and he cried, ' ' Thank 
God, I am safe ! " for he knew that the sam- 
phire does not grow except above high- water 
mark. 

God's promises are like that samphire. They 
grow above the reach of any destroying wave, and 
when we touch one of them, though in the dark- 
est hour and the deepest peril, we may know that 
we are safe. 

This is because the promises have God back of 
them. They are valueless to one that does not 
believe in God, or does not believe that they 
come from God. If a beggar makes out a check 
for a million dollars, it is so much waste paper j 
but if Eockefeller makes out such a check, it is 
as good as the gold. 

There is a familiar but very pointed story of a 
poor woman in Scotland whose son in Australia 
wrote to her often. "But doesn't he send you 
any money ?" asked a visitor one day. " No, 
nothing j but every time he writes he puts in a 

148 



God's Promises 

little picture like this/' The "picture" she 
showed was au engraved draft for fifty dollars. 

Too many of us are just like that poor wouiau. 
The Bible is, as Spurgeon called it, a u Check- 
book of the Bauk of Faith." Every one of its 
many and marvelous promises is signed by the 
Gr< ator and Owner of the universe. Check-books 
are not made to adorn a table or to furnish themes 
for meditation ; they are made to use, to get things 
with. Now what use are we making — what prac- 
tical use, of this infinitely rich and resourceful 
treasury ? 

There isn't much to be done — -just to tear out 
the check and carry it on our own feet to the 
bank. Not much, but that little must be done, 
or we can draw no blessing. The reason why so 
many lives are barren of the good which God 
means for them is because they expect it to fall 
out of the skies with no effort on their part. 

As Beecher said wittily, "God's promises were 
never meant to ferry our laziness like a boat ; they 
are to be rowed by our oars." 

But the most of us are like the little boy of the 
Jewish legend, who, while studying his Hebrew 
alphabet, was told that when he had learned his 
letters an angel would drop down on him a piece 
of money. Thereupon, quite forgetting the con- 
dition, the lad forsook his study, and spent his 
time gazing up into the skies, waiting for his 
money to fall ! 



149 



Testifying for Christ 



I shall always remember one little incident in 
connection with the London Christian Endeavor 
Convention of 1900. I was returning from the 
meetings late one night, and in the compartment 
was a bevy of bright English girls, a little old 
man being in one corner. He was a tiny, dried- 
up old man, and before we had gone far he be- 
gan, in a thin, piping voice, to line out a hymn. 
Having completed a stanza, he set out to sing it, 
and the girls, giggling and shamed-faced, joined 
in. So went the second stanza and the third, un- 
til the hymn was finished. 

Then the little old man, in his piping voice, 
began to tell his religious experience. He went 
back to the start, and related how he had found 
Christ, and what Christ had been to him all these 
years. By the time he was through we had 
reached his station, and I shall remember till my 
dying day the quaint picture he made, standing 
on the dimly lighted platform framed in by the 
doorway of the car, and baring his arm to show 
us, tattooed upon it, the words, u God is love." 
11 1 hope we may all meet up there," said he, 
pointing to the skies. u Good-night, young 
ladies," and our train moved away. The bright 
English lassies wore thoughtful, earnest faces. 
" What a dear old man ! " they said to one an- 
other. 

Now wasn't that fine? And doesn't it teach 
us all a lesson in Christian testimony ? I shall 
be readier all my days to speak a word for my 
Master because of that old man's brave words. 

I have learned from him that my testimony 

150 



Testifying for Christ 

must be after my fashion. I couldn't do what he 
did. I should be ridiculous and not impressive. 
But neither could he testify in my way. And I 
have a way. 

He taught me to vary my ways of testifying. 
In those brief minutes he testified by song, by the 
telling of experience, by a picture, by a gesture. 
God wants ingenious Christians. 

He taught me also that testimony must be 
' i out of season ' ' as well " as in season. ' ' Indeed, 
testimony "out of season" often turns out to be 
the most seasonable kind of testimony. 

He taught me that testimony must be personal. 
It must spring from life, if it is to reach lives. 

At the same time he taught me that this per- 
sonal testimony must be very humble. It was 
farthest from our thoughts that the old man was 
advertising himself. A man was persuaded by 
an ardent admirer of Spurgeon to go to hear the 
great preacher. When asked the next morning, 
"What did you think of him?" the man re- 
plied, i i Nothing at all. " " Nothing at all ? 
Why, what do you mean % ' ' The answer came 
with tears in the eyes : "I was not thinking at 
all of the preacher ; I was thinking of the preach- 
er' s Christ." 

Finally, I learned that testimony must be sin- 
cere. As bells are spoiled by the slightest foreign 
element in the bell-metal, so no testimony rings 
true with the slightest admixture of self-seeking, 
exaggeration, or hypocrisy. 

Speech is the noblest power of man, and to 
speak of Christ is the noblest kind of speech. 
May Christ add grace to our lips and courage to 
our hearts ! 

151 



The Evil of Envy 



So common a sin is envy that few have the 
grace to be ashamed of it. "I envy him that fine 
house," we say, lightly, as if we were not con- 
fessing a sin. 

How seldom do we meet a man or a woman that 
really rejoices in another's joy, exults in his ad- 
vancement, feels satisfaction in his increased pos- 
sessions ! u I used to go to school with her, and 
no one thought her smart. JSTow she has written 
that silly book, see what airs she puts on, and 
how people make much of her. Pah ! " "They 
were our neighbors, back in the ' 70s, before he 
made that lucky strike with the street-car motor. 
And now look at their stone house and their serv- 
ants ! What have they done to deserve it?" 
That is the ordinary tenor of word and thought. 

Have you ever considered that the Golden Eule 
requires a sympathy and reciprocity in gladness 
as well as in kindness? Your enjoyment is 
spoiled if others look sourly at your gain ; dare 
you look sourly at the gain of others f 

There is much talk about the brotherhood of 
man. You do not believe it, however much you 
preach it, unless you practice the brotherhood of 
enj oyment. If you are not pleased with another' s 
pleasure, if you cannot see a man riding out with 
his family and say in your heart, ' ' God bless you, 
brother, and give you a happy ride," but must 
rather ask, * t Why should my wife and I trudge 
afoot while they are rolled along on rubber tires?" 
then the brotherhood of man is to you only an 
empty name. 

152 



The Evil of Envy 

" What a wretched aud apostate state is this ! " 
cries Addison. u To be offended with excellence, 
and to hate a man because we approve him ! 
The condition of the envious man is most em- 
phatically miserable j he is not only incapable of 
rejoicing in another's merit or success, but lives 
in a world wherein all mankind are in a plot 
against his quiet, studying their own happiness 
and advantage." 

Not only does the envious man fail to know 
other men and sympathize with them, but he fails 
to know himself. As Gay sings : 

" Canst thou discern another's mind ? 
What is 't you envy? Envy's blind. 
Tell Envy, when she would annoy, 
That thousands want what you enjoy." 

Some men are so busy counting their neighbor's 
hens that they can't gather their own eggs. 

But worse than the envious man's failure to 
know and enjoy both his own fortune and that of 
others is his failure to know and rejoice in God. 
All discontent, all envy, is treason to Providence. 
There would speedily be an end to envy if Chris- 
tians would only make their own these noble 
thoughts of Francis Quarles : 

"In having all things, and not Thee, what have I? 

Not having Thee, what have my labors got ? 
Let me enjoy but Thee, what further crave I ? 

And having Thee alone, what have I not ? 
I wish nor sea nor land ; nor would I be 
Possessed of heaven, heaven unpossessed of Thee." 



153 



Ministering to Christ 



Many delightful legends represent poor travel- 
ers begging alms or other aid, and when it is 
given, or refused, the beggar suddenly flashes out 
into the beauty and majesty of Christ, the divine 
Rewarder or Punisher. These stories, however, 
add nothing to Christ' s simple statement that in 
every ministration to the needy we are minister- 
ing to Him. In a passage of marvelous power 
over human hearts, in words that would be the 
height of impudent blasphemy were not Christ 
divine, He sets before men as their loftiest 
motive for clothing the naked, feeding the 
hungry, comforting the desolate, the truth that 
these good deeds are actually done to Him. 

The pathos of the thought is irresistible, when 
once we understand it. To realize that the strong 
Saviour, who came not to be ministered unto but 
to minister, is Himself none the less in need of 
ministrations ! That He is hungry wherever one 
of His children is starving, that He wanders 
lonely in the person of every outcast, that He 
languishes in every prison cell. What religion 
other than Christianity has given us such a con- 
ception of God ; and does not every heart at once 
respond to it as true % 

But it is very hard to realize. When Chris- 
tians come to realize it, they will transform the 
world in one burst of love and sorrow and re- 
pentance. Alas, for our sense-beclouded vision ! 
If we could see Christ walking into our house, as 
He passed over that threshold at Bethany, how 
we would lavish our best upon Him, and long to 
have it better ! Yet in the form of many a beg- 
gar we have verily turned Him from our doors. 

154 



Ministering to Christ 

Why does He not manifest Himself unmis- 
takably ! Why does He not clothe every poor 
man, every prisoner, every son of sorrow, sin, 
and suffering with His own transfigured garments 
of light % Because He wants us to believe Him, 
in our hearts and not merely with our eyes. Be- 
cause He wants us to walk by faith and not by 
sight. Because He wants us to live in the spirit, 
and so prepare ourselves for the spiritual world 
to come. Should He cheat us of that indispen- 
sable training in order to spare our imaginations 
and our faith a little exercise % 

Does this teaching mean that we are to give to 
every beggar, regardless of whether the gift would 
do him harm or good ? Of course not. It simply 
means that Christ is in him, that we are to recog- 
nize Christ's claim through him, and that we owe 
to that unworthy beggar whatever time, strength, 
money, love, may develop the Christ-spirit within 
him, may make him a happy, prosperous, pure 
man again. That is what Christ would do, and 
that is what we must do, ministering to Him, and 
in His stead and power. 

Do we not all need to pray Miss Havergal's 
prayer I 

u O lead me, Lord, that I may lead 

The wandering and the wavering feet ; 

feed me, Lord, that I may feed 

My hungering ones with manna sweet. 

1 ' O strengthen me, that while I stand 
Firm on the rock, and strong in Thee, 

1 may stretch out a loving hand 

To wrestlers with the troubled sea." 



155 



Reverence for Sacred 
Things 



I have seen amid the solemn shrines of West- 
minster Abbey, and under the majestic arches of 
Ely or Lincoln cathedrals, as irreverent conduct 
as ever in a wooden church with its bare walls 
and plain glass windows. Eeverence is not born 
of place, but of grace. A truly religious man 
forms his cathedral from within. Eeverence is 
an attitude of mind, not of body ; and a man is 
irreverent, however punctiliously he bows his 
head in prayer, if that head is busied with his 
bank account or his invoices. 

Eeverence cannot be manufactured. It is a 
result of something else, an inevitable result ; and 
if that cause of it is obtained, we need take no 
thought for the reverence. That cause is a 
knowledge of God. 

First, know God as the Almighty. Who has 
not bowed his soul in awe under the vast sweep 
of the midnight heavens 1 Who does not kneel 
at the thought of infinite space, grasped in God's 
infinite arms ? Who has not worshiped that il- 
limitable might, the outreachings of whose power 
uphold alike the lordliest sun and the slightest 
gnat that floats on a summer breeze f And we 
can plant the stars in any daily task, so that, 
going about our common work, we shall tread 
softly as on holy ground, knowing that we are 
in the presence of the Most High. 

Second, know God as the All-wise. Have you 
ever met disaster when you let Him plan your 

156 



Reverence for Sacred Things 

life? Has the wisest mail ever suggested an 
improvement on any law of nature ? Through all 
the intricate course of the seasons is there any 
failure of His understanding ? One could spend 
a lifetime in the study of a dandelion, and not 
master half its secrets. Only a shallow head 
can remain unbent in the presence of even the 
lowest specimen of the divine handiwork. 

Third (and last, for a complete list is impossible), 
know God as All-loving. Nothing human in- 
spires so much reverence as a tender, self-sacri- 
ficing mother. She is the summit of creation. 
But God's self-sacrifice, God's tenderness, God's 
passion of loving service, is the source of hers, 
constantly sustains it, and far surpasses it. His 
love is unsearchable. His forgiveness is mar- 
velous. When I think of it, I am in church. 

When our hearts have come to know God in 
this way, we shall have no doubt as to what 
things are sacred, and reverence for them will be 
instinctive. We shall need no Sabbath rules, 
but shall rise daily to a Lord's day. We shall 
need no stint in Bible-reading, but shall always 
be hungry for it. We shall need no rules of 
conduct in God's house, for we shall really meet 
God there. And our whole life will pray this 
prayer of Eobert Montgomery's : 

1 ' Eternal Spirit ! grant 
The wisdom meek, that lives on truth divine 
However veiled. A waiting mind impart, 
And in our weakness show our strength to dwell, 
Like as of old the pensive Mary sat 
Low at His feet, and listened to her Lord ; 
Absorbed and self -renouncing, be our soul 
Before the cross in docile reverence bent." 

157 



How to Enter Christ's 
Family 



I know a family that is selfish, cold and distant 
toward its relatives, evidently desiring i l its sisters, 
its cousins, and its aunts ' ' merely to leave it 
alone. And I know another family whose de- 
light is in the family tree to its vaguest branches 
and most remote twigs, a family wherein a fifth 
cousin is most welcome, while a i i first cousin 
once removed" is cause for a month's rejoicing. 
These two families are types of two different 
ways of regarding Christ. One is abstract, philo- 
sophical, matter of fact ; the other is intimate, 
personal, loving. The first speaks of Christ's 
u dispensation," the second speaks of His 
' ' family. ' ' 

There is no doubt which of these ways of 
looking at the matter is most Christian. The 
Bible delights in picturing Christ as our Elder 
Brother, in painting the warm rooms of our 
Father's house, in representing us as sons of God. 
There is much talk about a kingdom, to be sure, 
but this Kingdom of God is within us, not coldly 
exterior. Our Father would have us at home 
with Him. 

No one can make any study of other religions 
without seeing how foreign this thought is to all 
of them. Their God is on top of Olympus, or 
he is in Mrvana, or he is up in the inaccessible 
sky. If he comes among men, it is only as a sur- 
prise and a portent. The family hearth, the 
Father's knee and open arms, the household at- 

158 



How to Enter Christ's Family 

mosphere — you may search all religious but 
Christianity, aud you will never find them. 

But do Christians always find them ? Alas, no ! 
For there is a pagan way of taking Christianity, 
as well as a pagan way of taking everything 
else. It is easy to think of God as afar off, to 
forget His omnipresence, to forget that He is 
acquainted with all our ways, to disregard Christ's 
revelation of the Father as entering our Nazareth 
workshops and our Jericho dining-rooms and our 
Bethany kitchens. And it avails little to have 
the Christian conception of a loving, forgiving 
God if we are going to thrust Him off on top of 
a snowy Olympus. 

How to enter Christ's family, then? The way 
is very simple. It is to get close to God, as Christ 
did. It is to seek above everything else to know 
God's will. Knowing it, it is to seek above 
everything else to do it. Doing it, it is to become 
acquainted with God and a friend of Christ. In 
tender phrase our beloved Whittier has depicted 
the beautiful relationship we then enter : 

1 ' We may not climb the heavenly steps 
To bring the Lord Christ down : 
In vain we search the lowest deeps, 
For Him no depths can drown. 

1 ' The healing of His seamless dress 
Is by our beds of pain ; 
We touch Him in life's throng and press, 
And we are whole again. 

' ' Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, 
What may Thy service be ? 
Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 
But simply following Thee. '' 

159 



That Which Comes First 



That quaint old divine, Matthew Henry, 
once wrote sententiously, "He who buys goods 
has paper and twine thrown in." How slow are 
men to learn that the greater includes the less ! 
Marry the heir apparent, and you need not worry 
about your coronet. Few of the sayings of 
Christ handed down outside the Bible are 
authentic, but this at least, quoted by Origen, 
has all the marks of a Christly authorship : 
"Ask great things, little things shall be added 
to you ; ask heavenly things, and earthly things 
shall be added to you." 

In Professor Drummond's capital address to 
boys, entitled " First ! " he compared religion to 
a ship's helm. "Suppose you take the helm out 
of a ship and hang it over the bow, and send that 
ship to sea ; will it ever reach the other side ? 
Certainly not. It will drift about anyhow. 
Keep religion in its place, and it will take you 
straight through life, and straight to your Father 
in heaven when life is over." And the place of 
religion is always— first. 

How can we tell whether we are putting re- 
ligion first? Chiefly by our desires and am- 
bitions. There is something we earnestly want, 
but we feel that God does not want us to have it, 
or we strive for it long in vain. Now, can we 
give up our own will and cheerfully accept 
God's? Can we enter into the spirit of Saxe 
Holm's noble poem, and say : 

" Now, Lord, I leave at Thy loved feet 
This thing which looks so near, so sweet; 

160 



That Which Comes First 

I will not seek, I will not long, 
I almost fear I have been wrong. 

"I'll go and work the harder, Lord, 
And wait till by some loud, clear word 
Thou callest me to Thy loved feet 
To take this thing so dear, so sweet." 

If we can say this, and mean it, we are putting 
" first things first," we are praying the Lord's 
Prayer, " Thy will be done.' 7 

And whoever puts first things first will find 
that second things and third things, and all the 
rest of them to infinity, will come along of their 
own accord. It is like building a twenty -story 
building. For weeks there is no progress, only a 
hole in the ground, only incessant driving of 
piles, and pouring of cement, and laying of great 
stones thirty or forty feet below the surface. 
Half the work is done, builders say, when an 
adequate foundation is completed. After that, 
the walls rise as if in a day. But if the founda- 
tion did not extend to bedrock or its equivalent, 
the twenty-stories would collapse more rapidly 
than they rose. 

And so Christ's demands upon us seem like un- 
derground work, negative work, work that does 
not count. It is subtraction, not addition ; giv- 
ing up, not gaining j an emptied life, a sur- 
rendered life, a hole in the ground. Yes, that is 
the first ; just as the recruit's first step is the 
surrender of his personal will, that he may be 
incorporated in the grand will of the army. 
Seek first the Kingdom, and yield yourself to it ; 
then — the crown on your head. You have be- 
come a king ! 

161 



Choosing a Hard Thing 



That fine old hero, Caleb, in his plucky 
choice, at his advanced age, of the portion of the 
Promised Land the most difficult to conquer, has 
stiffened many a weak backbone through all the 
ages since. For one thing, the vigorous old man 
has taught us the value of a stout body. i i Be- 
lieve me," says Bishop Potter, u there is no 
nobler work — no diviner work — than the work 
which teaches a young man a reverent care for 
his own body, and a scrupulous and tender re- 
gard for those divinely instituted laws of health 
which shall make that body more and more a 
weapon for God and for good." Caleb had not 
allowed this weapon to grow rusty. 

Secondly, Caleb teaches us that difficulties are 
things to be welcomed, not avoided. "Many 
men," declared Spurgeon, "owe the grandeur of 
their lives to their tremendous difficulties." 
This is because power that is not used becomes 
useless, just as muscle becomes flabby that is not 
often stretched against heavy weights. Phillips 
Brooks wisely said, "Every day the power that 
we will not use is falling from us." 

For this combat with difficulties must be an 
every- day fight. Caleb must have been doing 
hard things all his life, or he would not have 
been able thus magnificently to do a hard thing 
in his old age. As Anna Temple sings : 

" The present moment is divinely sent : 
The present duty is thy Master's will. 
O thou who longest for some noble work, 

162 



Choosing a Hard Thing 

Do thou this hour thy given task fulfil ! 

And thou shalt find, though small at first it seemed, 

It is the work of which thou oft hast dreamed." 

Undertaking these hard things, day after day, 
we find them constantly growing less difficult. 
Ruskin, indeed, asserts that "if a great thing 
can be done at all, it can be done easily. 
But it is that kind of ease with which a tree 
blossoms after long years of gathering strength. ' ' 
Caleb conquered Hebron with comparative ease, 
but only because he had been conquering Hebrons 
all his life. 

This is not to say that his courageous campaign 
was without peril. There would have been no 
glory had there been no danger. One of old 
Plutarch's sage maxims is this : " To do an evil 
action is base ; to do a good action, without in- 
curring danger, is common enough ; but it is the 
part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, 
though he risks everything." 

But we can venture all things, because we 
have all strength to aid us. To use the brave 
words of Mrs. Charles : ' l We are never with- 
out help. We have no right to say of any 
good work, It is too hard for me to do ; or of 
any sorrow, It is too hard for me to bear ; or of 
any sinful habit, It is too hard for me to over- 
come." If we have Caleb's sense of an ever- 
present God, who is our omnipotent Comrade in 
every battle, what foe shall we fear to face, what 
difficulty may we not overcome ? 



163 



Tempted and Tried 



One day, after Wendell Phillips, then in his 
youth, had heard Lyman Beecher preach, he went 
to his room, threw himself on the floor, and cried, 
"Oh, God, I belong to Thee! Take what is 
Thine own. I ask this, that whenever a thing 
be wrong it may have no power of temptation 
over me, and whenever a thing be right it may 
take no courage to do it." His prayer was 
heard, and in the strength of it he conquered 
without a struggle all the temptations of wealth 
and popularity, and became the Cceur de Lion of 
American reforms. His experience illustrates 
one secret of the mastery of temptation : Dedicate 
yourself, in all sincerity and completeness, to the 
service of God. 

A second rule, following hard on the first, is 
this : Keep your mind fixed on Christ, who. 
having met all our temptations, can alone save us 
from them. A man asked an Eastern king how 
to avoid temptation. The king sternly com- 
manded him to carry through the city a vessel 
brimful of oil. Two swordsmen walked behind, 
ready to cut off his head if he spilled a drop. 
The streets were crowded as he passed through, 
for a great fair was in progress, but when the 
man returned to the king, not having spilled a 
drop of oil, and the king asked him if he had 
seen any one in the course of his walk, the man 
replied that he had seen no one, his mind was so 
intent on his hazardous task. ' i Thus, ' ' said the 
wise king, i i keep your mind intent on God, and 
you will receive no temptation." 

The third rule is, If you do meet temptation, 

164 



Tempted and Tried 

resist it with bold and fierce decision. Imitate 
that Mississippi steamer's captain during the 
American Civil War, who was under strict orders 
to carry no cotton. At a certain landing a planter 
came on board and offered him $10,000 if he 
would take his cotton to New Orleans. The 
planter was refused, and raised his offer to $20, - 
000, then to $30,000, and so on, till he reached 
the sum of $100, 000. At this the captain fiercely 
pointed a revolver at the tempter's head, shout- 
ing, "Get off this boat, instantly! You're get- 
ting too close to me." 

We must surround ourselves with all exterior 
aids toward this conquest of temptation, filling 
our lives with wise reading, strong friendships, 
and hard work. Thackeray applied this prin- 
ciple once. When given an engraving of "St. 
George and the Dragon," he declared that he 
would place it at the head of his bed, where it 
would remind him constantly of the two dragons 
he had to fight, indolence and luxury. Let us 
imitate the hero of Mary Higginson's fine sonnet: 

' ' We wondered why he always turned aside 
When mirth and gladness filled the brimming days ; 
Who else so fit as he for pleasure's ways ? 
Men thought him frozen by a selfish pride ; 
But that his voice was music none denied, 
Or that his smile was like the sun's warm rays, 
One day upon the sands he spoke in praise 
Of swimmers who were buffeting the tide : 
' The swelling waves of life they dare to meet. 
I may not plunge where others safely go. 
Unbidden longings in my pulses beat.' 
O blind and thoughtless world ! you little know 
That ever round this hero's steadfast feet 
Surges and tugs the dreaded undertow." 

165 



Our Simple Duty 



An " unprofitable servant" is one that makes 
no profit for his master. He may i i earn his 
keep," but nothing more. He is not putting 
money, time, strength, out at interest for his 
master, like the wise servants in Christ's better- 
known parable. 

It is the extras that count ; gifts that are more 
than our share, deeds that are more than our 
duty. No one can please God that is all the time 
asking, u How much must I do?" To be a 
profitable servant he should continually ask, 
1 i What more may I do ! " Like Carey, he must 
" attempt great things for God, expect great 
things from God." 

A Christian is an unprofitable servant, merely 
earning his board and hardly that, if his religious 
life occupies itself with the receptive side of re- 
ligion, or the purely formal. Church-going is 
not " service ; " it is getting strength for service. 
The proper prayer meeting is not Christian 
work ; it is for conference regarding Christian 
work with one another and with God. Bible- 
reading, private devotions, which so many Chris- 
tians make so much of a duty, is no more duty- 
doing than would be a lover's reading of a letter 
from a lover, or the talk of the two together. 
When such things are magnified into tasks, some- 
thing is radically wrong with religion. They are 
not outgoings, they are all income ; they are not 
exercise, they are feeding. 

Do I imply that little Christian work is done I 

166 



Our Simple Duty 

Yes, very little in comparison with what we think 
we are doing and what we ought to do. Churches 
with no conversions during the year are too com- 
mon, missionary boards in debt are too common, 
to render this truth other than sadly evident. 
The progress of Christianity — for Christianity is 
progressing and gloriously — is won by the few 
and not by the many. If all had been at work, 
Christ would long before this have conquered the 
world. 

What, then, in order to be profitable servants, 
are some of the things we should be doing, in ad- 
dition to eating at the Lord' s rich table of spirit- 
ual food ? 

We should be going out into the " highways 
and hedges, ' ' and bidding to our feast the poor, 
the halt, and the blind. We should be com- 
pelling them to come in. We should be healing, 
not those already well, but the sick. We should 
be seeking, not the lambs in the fold, but those 
lost on the hillside. No one that is not a mission- 
ary Christian escapes the condemnation of being 
an unprofitable servant. 

I do not mean that we must leave home, though 
God wants some to do that. Home is a fearful 
place when Christ is calling us over in Mace- 
donia. But He is calling many of us in our 
homes. The girl in the kitchen does not know 
Christ. The postman is an unbeliever. Your 
own brother is serving mammon and not God. 

"Be thy best thoughts to work divine addressed ; 
Do something — do it soon — with all thy might. 
An angel's wing would droop if long at rest, 
And God, Himself, inactive, were no longer blessed,,' * 

167 



The Broad Way: 
the Narrow Way 



Christ, we may be sure, does not want to 
make the Christian life a hard life. He wants as 
many as possible to get to heaven, and to have as 
easy a time as possible on the road. He is not 
like the Pharisees, loading upon us heavy burdens 
that He will not touch even with the finger of 
sympathy. 

And yet of necessity it is true that the reality 
of our Christian life is largely to be measured by 
its difficulty ; and the harder time we are having 
the more likely is it that we are following Christ. 
This is because Christ is climbing mountains, 
while other leaders are treading the valley paths. 
This is because Christ is on the frontier, while 
other leaders are back among the parlors. This 
is because Christ's ship is on the sea in the midst 
of the storm, while other captains are eating 
apples by the fireside. 

" Woe unto you," said Christ, " when all men 
speak well of you." Friendship is not an evil 
— of course He did not mean that ; but it is an 
evil to have some men for friends. No one can 
do his duty without having some men for enemies. 
On a mission field, when Christianity becomes 
fashionable, the missionaries tremble. "Bice 
Christians " become fashionable also. 

No, we must "take up our cross," if we would 
follow Him. We must be "crucified with 
Christ," if we would rise into His glory. We 
are not to seek martyrdom for its own sake or 
sacrifice for its own sake, any more than Christ 

168 



The Broad Way : the Narrow Way 

did ; but if we do Christ's work, fearlessly and 
thoroughly, the sacrifice, the martyrdom — to 
some extent, at least — are inevitable. 

Paul indicated one negative of importance 
when he said that if meat made his brother 
stumble he would eat no meat while the world 
stands. The Christian's road is sadly narrowed 
by the weaknesses and temptations of those that 
are not Christians. We must forego many a 
practice and pleasure that we might enjoy if all 
the world were Christ's. But shall we not rejoice 
in the narrowness of the way, since He walks in 
it with us ? 

The giving up of idolatrous meat, however, is 
a small matter after one has been imprisoned, 
scourged, stoned. The bother Christians make 
about "doubtful amusements" and the like, is 
a sad commentary on their active piety. If a 
man is out in the storm looking for a lost brother 
he does not stop to think of the chestnuts he 
might be roasting by the fire. 

Of course, it is not pleasant to see how broad 
and smooth the worldling's way is, how full of 
beauty to the senses, while ours is harsh under- 
neath, swept by rough winds, confined by strict, 
bare walls. But the end of our way is heaven, 
of his is hell. And the Companion on our way 
is Christ. Shall we not hourly sing, with the 
heroic Zinzendorf : 

" Jesus, still lead on, 

Till our rest be won! 
And although the way be cheerless, 
We will follow, calm and fearless; 

Guide us by Thy Hand 

To our fatherland! " 

169 



Tares in Your Field 



There was current in ancient times a parable 
which is beautifully parallel to our Lord's story 
of the tares. A seer is shown a forest of leafless 
trees and bidden to point out which boughs are 
dead and which are alive. Of course, he is 
unable to do this. Later, he is shown the 
same trees after spring has worked its miracle 
of foliage, and now he can distinguish at a 
glance the live boughs from the dead ones. 
So it is with men's lives. It is hard, often 
impossible, for us to separate in this world the 
evil from the good ; but in the summer-land 
above, where all souls blossom in the sunshine 
of perfect joy, life will prove itself superbly, and 
death will go to its own place. 

The parable is aimed at the would-be classifiers, 
who are constantly breaking Christ' s command, 
' ' Judge not. ' ' They are always for plucking out 
motes. No one is right but they and Brother 
John, and they have their suspicions of Brother 
John. The whip of small cords is their Chris- 
tian symbol, and they cleanse the temple daily 
and hourly. They want to weed out the tares, 
and they pull up three wheat stalks for every 
weed. Christ's parable teaches wiser farming. 

But though the parable thus applies chiefly 
to groups of Christians, we are right in applying 
it also, as it always is applied, to the individual 
Christian life. How about the tares in the fields 
of our souls % 

170 



Tares in Your Field 

The devil sows them ; yes, but he wouldn't get 
far over the field if we didn't help him. 

We help him by carelessness regarding our seed 
supply. A little care of the seed saves great 
care of the field. Did you ever seriously ex- 
amine the influences you permit to touch your 
life, classify them honestly into good and evil 
and doubtful? We would not put poison into 
our mouths, but we readily put it into our ears. 
We would not pour vitriol over our faces, but we 
unhesitatingly pour spiritual vitriol into our 
eyes. We shun a house with the yellow flag, 
but we open our minds to germs worse than the 
most virulent smallpox. 

If at the end of an ordinary day we could see 
our soul-gardens under some physical guise, 
what would we observe? The nightshade of a 
licentious novel has sprung up, borne fruit, 
scattered seed, and a thousand deadly plants are 
making the garden pestiferous. The nettle of a 
malicious slander has vied with the nightshade 
in fecundity. That thick-lipped purslane, 
covetousness, getting a start from a tiny seed 
among the pansies, has crept over all the richest 
parts of the garden. 

Ah, what help we need, to keep the garden of 
our souls ! You will remember that Mary, on 
the first Easter morning, thought Christ to be the 
gardener. Let Him be the Gardener. He alone 
can guard the gate, by night and day, and keep 
out the enemy. He alone can purify the seed 
and bring it safely and luxuriantly to maturity. 
He alone can remove the tares already there and 
keep us from new tares for evermore. 



171 



The Great Surrender 



That humorous philosopher, Eobert J. Bur- 
dette, pictures somewhere the mau that has the 
tinkering habit. "Where he should rip off a 
rotting roof from ridge to cornice, he will stick 
in a shingle, a piece of slate, a scrap of tin, amid 
ever-increasing leaks, dry rot, and general decay. 
He braces and bolsters and patches walls and 
fences until his farm looks as though it had a 
combination of Saint Vitus' dance and delirium 
tremens." And that is what lots of us are doing 
with our lives, trying to patch them up, when 
what they need is tearing down and rebuilding. 

How often in the city I see the exhilarating 
process ! Down it comes, a four or five story 
building, of costly marble, like as not. Sculp- 
tured ornaments, polished pillars, carved wood- 
work, great plate-glass windows — they are all 
carted away. Even the cellar is pulled out, like 
the root of a decayed tooth. Not a partition is 
left to mark the plan of the old building. And 
then, deeper and deeper, the earth is hollowed 
out two or three stories below the surface. Piles 
are driven. Great masses of concrete are poured 
in. For the new building is to rise ten, twenty, 
perhaps thirty stories into the air ! A new, 
splendid plan. Fresh, solid, beautiful materials. 
Deeper, higher, broader. That is the way men 
build in the material world. 

Oh, for courage to build thus in the spiritual 
world ! Put away the old man. Put on the new 
man. 

Bishop Whipple told of an Indian that did it. 
He was a terrible and famous warrior, but he 

172 



The Great Surrender 

came to lay his tomahawk at the feet of Christ. 
To test him, the missionary said, i ' Let me cut 
your hair." The Indian's scalplock is for his 
enemy to grasp — if he can. To allow it to be cut 
means squawdom. "Yes," said the Indian, "I 
am in earnest ; if I can be a follower of Jesus 
Christ, I can suffer anything." So the mission- 
ary cut off the symbolic lock. The warrior was 
almost frenzied by the jeers that followed, but he 
stood his ground like a hero ; he had made the 
great surrender. 

Now that is precisely what Christ wants us to 
do : first, to be His in our hearts, through and 
through ; then, to be willing and eager to show 
ourselves His before men. 

"Surrender," after all, is hardly the word for 
it ; that involves a suspicion of disgrace, an indi- 
cation of failure. Really, to become Christ's is 
to begin for the first time to succeed. It is the 
greatest honor that could possibly come to one. 
It is as when a warrior kneels before his sovereign 
and rises a knight. It is as when a midshipman 
is made admiral of a fleet of battleships. No 
comparison can indicate the glory of the alliance 
we enter into when we become Christ's. 

For that is only half of it. When we become 
Christ's, Christ becomes ours. He was ours be- 
fore, in the sense that He longed for us, and did 
for us what we would let Him ; but now all bar- 
riers are down, and we have free access to His 
infinite stores of power and wisdom and joy. 
That means an instant enabling and enriching of 
our life beyond our wildest dreams, and a con- 
tinual progress in power and bliss through the 
endless reaches of eternity. 

173 



What is Practical 
Christianity ? 



Practical Christianity is the religion of doing 
things 5 spiritual Christianity is the religion of 
believing things. At first glance there seems to 
be a wide difference between these two, but there 
is not. Practical Christianity is eminently spir- 
itual and spiritual Christianity is eminently prac- 
tical. 

The letter by James has been called " the Gospel 
of common sense." Luther, with his enthusiasm 
for his recovered doctrine of justification by faith, 
called it u an epistle of straw/' and wanted to 
drop it from the New Testament. But Luther 
should have learned better from his favorite 
Epistle to the Romans, in whose twelfth chapter 
he would have found as plain directions for prac- 
tical Christianity as anywhere in James. 

It is so easy to run to extremes ! Men get the 
great thought of the beauty of holiness, and at 
once they become, essentially, modern monks and 
nuns. They think that ' ' pray without ceasing 7 ? 
means continually to contemplate heaven and 
avoid contact with earthly affairs. They live for 
their Bibles, and for communion with God. 

Other men, of the bustling kind, scorn all this. 
They ridicule prayer meetings as "talk, talk, 
nothing but talk." They urge Christians to " do 
something." "Pray with ministering hands," 
they urge, ' ' and with feet that are swift on er- 
rands of mercy." 

Now, the fact that both of these views of life 
are true, and each only a half truth, makes each 
actually a dangerous view. There is no safety 

174 



What is Practical Christianity? 

except in Christ's way, and Christ's way was 
neither of these, but lay between the two. Christ 
had His Mount of Transfiguration, but He re- 
fused to stay there. He knew that sick ones 
were waiting to be healed on the plain below. 

When David Livingstone was a boy he received 
from his dying Sunday-school teacher some ad- 
vice that he never forgot. It was this : "Lad, 
make religion the every -day business of your 
life." That is what every missionary must do. 

A little Jewish girl in Palestine had heard two 
missionary ladies described as people who lived 
" near the Lord." Misunderstanding the words, 
one day when she had been sent to them to ask 
them to visit and pray with a sick person, she 
said, "I've been to see the two ladies who live 
next door to God." That familiar, neighborly 
conception of religion is just the right one. 

Thackeray once said : " 'Tis not the dying for 
a faith that's so hard — some man of every nation 
has done that : 'tis the living up to it that is so 
difficult." And Herrick asks and answers : 

* ' Is this a fast, to keep 
The larder lean 
And clean 
From fat of veales and sheep ? 

1 ' No ; 'tis a fast to dole 
Thy sheaf of wheat, 
And meat, 
Unto the hungry soul." 

Let us not satisfy ourselves with a religion of 
our own fireside and dining table. We are to go 
forth, wherever the hungry are ; and we are not 
only to invite them to our full feast, but we are to 
compel them to come in. 

175 



The Abundant Life 



A large book has been written to prove that 
the Creator gives each man at birth a certain 
definite amount of vigor, the capacity for just so 
much movement of body and exercise of brain. 
Every day's living draws on this store, and the 
reservoir is never filled up. When the supply is 
exhausted, the man dies. 

According to this absurd theory, the more a 
man exercises the less strength he has ; the only 
way to live long is to live sluggishly, making as 
little demands upon one' s self as possible. 

Every man's experience contradicts that theory. 
We all know that our stock of vitality and of 
energy may be increased. We all know, for 
example, that the man that exercises regularly 
and sensibly, not only has a stronger body while 
he lives, but is likely to live many years longer 
than without exercise. We all know that if we 
use our minds actively we not only live to more 
purpose while we live, but our lives are thereby 
extended. 

Now there are two ways of seeking this abundant 
life. One is false and futile, the other is true and 
successful. One is the world's way, the other is 
Christ's way. 

There is a story of an Eastern king who was 
told by an oracle that he had only twelve years 
more to live. At once he began to try to outwit 
the oracle. He surrounded himself with every 
luxury. He made his life a marvel of pleasurable 
experiences. He lighted his vast estates so bril- 

176 



The Abundant Life 

liantly that tliey shone as brightly by night as 
by day. Whenever he was awake his servants 
were ready to urge forward the current of his 
joys. Thus he thought to cheat the oracle, and 
crowd twenty-four years of life into twelve. But 
the wise oracle was not to be cheated, for he died 
in six years. 

But if the foolish monarch had tried in another 
way, he might have lived the more abundant life. 
He tried the world' s way, the way of getting ; he 
should have tried Christ's way, the way of giving. 
Our Lord lived for others more than any one else 
has ever lived. His was a life of only thirty- 
three years, but did even Methuselah live as 
long? 

The only way for the lamp to get more life is 
by radiating more light, sure that the oil will be 
replenished in the wick as the light is given out. 
The only way for the fire to get more life is by 
giving out more heat. The only way for the 
music to get more life is by pulsing forth a more 
stirring harmony. The only way for the fruit to 
get more life is by storing up more sweetness for 
men. And the only way for men to get more life 
is by using for others the life they already have. 
As Lucy Larcom sung : — 

u We need, each and all, to be needed, 

To feel we have something to give 
Toward soothing the moan of earth's hunger ; 

And we know that then only we live 
When we feed one another, as we have been fed, 
From the Hand that gives body and spirit their bread." 

Are we growing in power to do this ? That is 
the great question for each one of us. 

177 



Growing in Grace 



1 ' The Bible compares our souls to trees, ' ? says 
Charles Kingsley, ' c not out of a mere pretty 
fancy of poetry, but for a great, awful, deep, 
world-wide lesson, that every tree in the fields 
may be a pattern, a warning, to us thoughtless 
men, that as that tree is meant to grow, so our 
souls are meant to grow. As that tree dies unless 
it grows, so our souls must die unless they grow. 
Consider that." 

Scarcely is there a more important question, 
after the one great question, ' ' Have you entered 
the Christian life % ' ' than this : i i Are you grow- 
ing in it? " To this question many sullenly an- 
swer, ' 1 1 am made as I am made 5 how can I change 
it?" Dean Stanley replies wisely in one of 
his sermons: "We are sometimes inclined to 
think that our characters, once formed, can never 
change. This is not true ; at least, it is only 
half true. Our natural dispositions, our natural 
faculties, these do very rarely change ; but the 
direction that they take can be changed." The 
oak-sapling must remain an oak and the rose- 
shoot must remain a rose ; but they may grow 
into a mighty oak, a bower of roses, or they may 
become only a stunted tree, a barren bush. 

A tree, as Kingsley goes on to say, grows in 
two ways. Its roots gather strength from the 
soil, its leaves from the air. Strip it of its leaves, 
and, though it is rooted in the richest soil, it will 
die. Cut its roots in two, and though the fertile 

178 



Growing in Grace 

air of the tropics breathe around it, death will 
speedily come. So must our human growth be 
fed by earth and heaven, by Mends and books 
and health and material gifts, by prayer and 
Bible and the strengthening presence of God. A 
wise Christian will reach out all the faculties of 
his nature, seeking from all sources the materials 
of his growth. 

Every one has made already some beginnings 
of a noble character; and, as Thomas Brooks 
says, u There is no such way to attain to greater 
measures of grace, as for a man to live up to the 
little grace he has." Do the good you know how 
to do, and you will soon know how to do more 
good. 

A gracious character is not to be won without 
indomitable patience. Sin leaps up defiant, 
again and again. Failures daunt us and tempta- 
tions allure. We must bear with our blundering 
selves. We must look hopefully forward, and 
not backward in despair. No tree can grow per- 
ceptibly. Let it be enough if it can show a bud 
here, a new leaf there. Hear Susan Coolidge's 
lovely words : 

" How does the soul grow? Not all in a minute ; 
Now it may lose ground, and now it may win it ; 
Now it resolves, and again the will faileth; 
Now it rejoiceth, and now it bewaileth ; 
Now its hopes fructify, then they are blighted ; 
Now it walks sunnily, now gropes benighted ; 
Fed by discouragements, taught by disaster, 
So it goes forward, now slower, now faster, 
Till, all the pain past, and the failures made whole, 
It is full grown, and the Lord rules the soul." 



179 



Cumberers of the Ground 



If a plant does not make good use of the 
ground it occupies, it very soon ceases to occupy 
it ; it dies. Nature is a woman after Henry 
George's own heart. She will have no idle land. 
"Use the soil, or leave it to plants that will use 
it ! " is her stern command. If roots will not 
draw in nurture, if trunk will not thrust out new 
layers of girth, if branches will not push forth 
their beautiful bewilderment of green, the writ 
of evictment is speedily issued, and a rotten log 
enriches the earth for its more faithful successor. 

Ground is as valuable among men. I have in 
mind a certain important corner in Boston where 
a handsome, though small shop has been tenanted 
by a number of firms in swift succession, each 
abandoning the expensive place because he could 
not do business enough to pay rent. 1 1 He has 
the position, but can he hold it f ' ' is often asked 
regarding situations with mercantile firms. 
" Possession " is not "nine points" or even one 
point in favor of the incompetent holder of a 
business post. If he does not " fill the bill" he 
must not "fill the place." 

Now isn't it strange that none of these con- 
siderations occur to many that have joined 
Christ's church, and therefore have agreed to 
' i be about their Father' s business " ? Is not their 
position safe, forsooth? Will any one remove 
the children of the King t Are they not church- 
members "for good," whether they are "any 
good at it" or not? 

180 



Cumberers of the Ground 

Ah, let all Christians take to heart Christ 7 s 
parable of the talents, and especially the fate of 
the napkin man ! ' ' Thou hast left thy first 
love," said Christ to the Ephesians. " Bepent, 
do better, else I will remove thy candlestick out 
of its place" ; that is, dismiss them from their 
post. 

"Our Father's business" has no room for 
sluggards. "The King's business requireth 
haste." There is the whole world to be reached, 
every creature to be helped. The gospel train 
must always run express, the gospel ship hold 
the record. 

Paint in your mind two pictures : on the one 
hand, the sins heaven-high, the greeds, ambi- 
tions, infidelities, and hatreds of men, the wars, 
the strikes, the poverty, the saloons, the places 
of shame, and all these raging against Christ and 
tearing His kingdom ; and on the other hand, 
paint the first Christian you are likely to meet, 
who thinks himself overworked with listening to 
sermons, and attending one committee meeting a 
month, and hunting up a new alto for the choir ! 
Is it not strange that God has such patience with 
us as He has ? 

He will give all of us a fresh chance — you, if 
you have been a cumberer of the ground, a 
barren fig-tree. He will loosen the ground, that 
has become sermon-hardened ; possibly He will 
loosen it with the sharp plough of sorrow. He 
will enrich it with new truths and inspirations, 
though heaven knows you have truths enough 
already. He will try you again. And this time 
you will bring forth fruit. 

181 



How Can I Know That 
I am Saved? 



Probably the excuse most commonly made 
for not joining the church is, " I am not good 
enough." No excuse is more foolish. The 
church was established precisely for those that 
are "not good enough." "The glory of the 
gospel is this," says Meyer, "that God comes to 
the unfit, to the marred and spoiled." To know 
you are saved is, in the very first place, to know 
yourself to be, not a saint, but a sinner. 

Some think they cannot be saved till they have 
experienced certain unusual and startling sensa- 
tions. Some one said to Spurgeon once, ' l Sir, I 
was quite sure I was saved, for I felt so light." 
"Poor simpleton," was the great preacher's com- 
ment, ' ' what does it matter whether you felt 
light or heavy f Perhaps you were light-headed, 
or half out of your mind with excitement. ' ' 

Indeed, we need not consider at all how we feel 
in the matter. ' * There are three things, ' ' says 
Meyer: "feeling, faith, and fact. You must 
change, and put them thus : fact, faith — and feel- 
ing a hundred years after, if you like." 

Again, we need not consider our opinions in 
this matter of our salvation. Major Whittle 
said once that in the time of Noah there were 
those who, as the rain began to fall, had firm 
belief that the hills would be as safe for them 
as the ark ; but their opinion did not change the 
fact, or make them safe on the hills. The ques- 

182 



How Can I Know That I am Saved? 

tion is not, "What mode of salvation does my 
mind approve?" but "How does God really 
save men ! ' ' 

The Indian that Mr. Moody liked to tell about 
had the right idea. Some one asked him how he 
got converted. He built a fire in a circle around 
a worm, and then, after the worm had crawled 
every way and had lain down to die, he took it 
out. Salvation is as simple and unmistakable as 
that. 

Only, we are more than saved from some- 
thing ; we are saved to some one. The main 
reason why salvation so often lacks confidence 
and exhilaration is because it lacks communion. 
A negation is not vivid and convincing evidence. 
Just to be rid of sin is a matter soon forgotten. 
To be sure of our salvation we need, not the 
absence of anything, but the presence of Christ. 
To know that Christ is with us, to be quietly 
conscious of His loving sympathy and His 
powerful aid — that is to be conscious that we 
are saved. 

There is, however, one more test of salvation : 
our care for the salvation of others. If you long 
for the salvation of others, you need not doubt 
your own salvation. If you are eager to join 
others to Christ, you may be sure that you are 
very close to Him. On the other hand, those 
that live selfish lives, careless whether those 
around them reach heaven or not — whatever fine 
show of religion they may present — will some 
day hear those most terrible of all words, "De- 
part from me ; I never knew you." 



183 



The Secret of Endurance 



There is more than one secret of endurance, 
and the brave man is not always brave for the 
same reason. Sometimes his patience and cour- 
age spring simply from the dogged confidence 
that things are going to grow better. He has 
the feeling expressed by Harriet Beecher Stowe : 
u When you get in a tight place and everything 
goes against you, till it seems as if you could not 
hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for 
that's just the place and time that the tide' 11 
turn. ' ' The hopeful man has a double strength — 
that of to-day and that of to-morrow. Hear 
James Whitcomb Eiley sing : 

* ' Who bides his time — he tastes the sweet 

Of honey in the saltest tear ; 
And though he fares with slowest feet, 

Joy runs to meet him, drawing near ; 
The birds are heralds of his cause, 

And like a never-ending rhyme 
The roadsides bloom in his applause 

Who bides his time. ' ' 

No fortune is so bad that an imperial spirit 
cannot transform it to victory. I have read of a 
man, blind from childhood, who trained himself 
to become a skilled athlete, flying from trapeze 
to trapeze like a bird. He taught many scholars, 
carried on a school of health, and made valuable 
contributions to the science of his specialty. 
We all know the wonderful story of Mr. Fawcett, 
blind also from his youth, who made himself one 
of England's leading economists and most expert 
and valued members of Parliament. 

184 



The Secret of Endurance 

Not only does the brave man rise superior to 
his disadvantages by patient endurance — often he 
even causes them to disappear. I remember the 
story of Lieutenant Henderson captured by the 
natives of the Gold Coast Hinterland. While 
they were discussing how they should kill him, 
he yawned, bade them wake him when they had 
made up their minds, and went to sleep ! His 
captors concluded that he must be a personage of 
immense importance, and preserved him un- 
harmed. In like manner many dangers of our 
lives will disappear if we will only — go to sleep ! 

Still another motive for endurance is the 
knowledge that Christ, the omnipotent Christ, is 
always with us if we are doing our duty. We 
may be like the preaching cobbler, who, when 
warned that a mob had gathered to prevent his 
speaking, replied, i ' God has given me a sign in 
my heart that I am to preach for Him to-night, 
and after that I take no account of the number of 
my enemies. ' ' In all dangers we may bravely re- 
peat Susan Coolidge's verse : 

' ' Then is the time of test, when Faith 
Cries to the heart which inly faints : 
1 Courage ! nor let thy forces dim. 
Although He slay thee, trust in Him 
Who giveth good and tempereth ill, 
And never fails, and never will, 
To be the refuge of His saints. ' ' ' 

Yes, Christ is with us. We can endure, as 
seeing Him who is invisible. 1 1 Courage ! ' ' cried 
Samuel Eutherford of old. ' ' Up your heart ! 
When ye do tire, He will bear both you and 
your burden." 

185 



The Little End of Things 



I once heard a most instructive discourse on 
"The Small End of Great Problems." The 
speaker, an eminent Englishman, likened all our 
human interests to the radii of a circle. They 
grow out to the stars. But they also converge 
upon a point. Only a short distance from the 
centre they span a space our arms cannot grasp ; 
out among the stars they include vast spaces our 
thought itself cannot grasp ; but at the centre, 
where they start, a child' s hand can cover them 
all. 

His illustrations, I am sorry to say, I do not 
remember, but we might take the infinitely com- 
plicated problem of the relations between labor 
and capital, involving nearly every man, woman, 
and child on earth, connected with every work 
of man, influencing his happiness and welfare at 
almost every point, and presenting difficulties 
that seem to defy a consistent, harmonious solu- 
tion. For many years theorists and practical men 
have reached after a comprehension of these 
problems, and have fallen back, thwarted. Has 
the difficulty a small end 1 Do its radii converge % 
Yes, upon your kitchen, for instance. Is the girl 
there treated like a fellow being or a machine % 
Is she given fair wages, a comfortable, pleasant 
room, a due amount of leisure % And in return 
for this is she industrious, obedient, considerate 
and cheerful % These are simple matters, easily 
comprehended and adjusted ; but they involve the 
entire problem of the relation between labor and 
capital. 

There is no truth more necessary for the Chris- 

186 



The Little End of Things 

tian to learn, that he may wisely conduct his life, 
than this, that eternal issues are always fought 
out on small arenas. 

Is he to be pure? It is not a question of a 
knightly combat with some superb temptation, 
in a clanging tournament, with banners waving 
and spectators gazing enthralled. This infinite 
question is decided for him by the refusal to look 
at that indecent picture, the tossing aside of this 
sensuous novel, the avoidance, to-day, to-morrow, 
the next day, of some little temptation to im- 
purity. 

Is he to be a leader % Not if he waits for some 
momentous crisis, when the throngs will turn pale 
faces toward him, and cry with one voice, " Step 
to the head, take control, or we are lost!" 
Throngs are not so silly. Leadership is won as 
Gladstone won it, on the day when he planned 
to take a long walk, and took it, though a driv- 
ing rain had come up, because he would not 
break through his habit of carrying out his plans. 
It is won by just such trivial exercises of the 
will. 

And so one might easily continue, but it is not 
necessary. The essential thing is for the Chris- 
tian to remember constantly that life is decided, 
eternal life, as he decides upon its trifling details. 
If any great matter perplexes him, its solution 
lies close at hand, and not far off. If he does 
not "get on in the world," the barrier is made 
up of some little bad habit, multiplied into a 
mountain by constant repetition. And if he 
wins entrance to heaven, the abode where he is to 
dwell in happiness forever will be made up of 
small kindnesses and little self-denials. 

187 



The Needy at Our Door 



What is the easiest thing a man can do ? Shut 
his eyes. 

]STo one has the least difficulty in persuading 
himself, and usually in persuading others, that 
the house, the church, the town he lives in are all 
right. That things are going on about as well as 
might be expected. That really there is no need 
of taking trouble. Yet sin is all around us, and 
want and woe are everywhere, and if the world 
were sure to end to-morrow, what a cry of terror 
would ascend to heaven ! 

Or, if we do recognize the needs of the world, 
it is so easy to stop with the satisfaction of hav- 
ing recognized them. The world is full of men 
pointing proudly to some lack they have discov- 
ered. " I have discovered it," they say, " got up 
meetings about it, made speeches on it, discussed 
it in newspapers and books. I have done my 
duty. Now let the world do the rest." 

One man lifting a corner of a load is worth a 
hundred men guessing at its weight and describ- 
ing the muscles used in lifting it. 

I would not have one prayer meeting less, one 
sermon less ; but prayer meeting and sermon 
must be carried on into actual living, or they 
breed miasmas, like any other stagnant pool. At 
the end of every prayer meeting should be writ- 
ten, "To be continued in our next" — on Mon- 
day, or Thursday, or Friday. 

For instance, Lazarus at the gate. You must 

188 



The Needy at Our Door 

know some one family, at least, that is in physical 
need. Feed them, clothe them, help them to feed 
and clothe themselves. Yon must know one per- 
son, at least, that is in spiritual need, not even 
the dogs licking the sores of the soul. You may 
not be wise, but you know more of Christ than he 
knows, and you can tell him. Open your eyes. 
Be honest with yourself and others. Look to 
your gate. Lazarus is there. 

You are needy yourself. Dives never discov- 
ers how poor he is until he tries to help Lazarus. 
He finds that he is poor in tact, poor in sympathy, 
poor in practical wisdom ; and these are serious 
kinds of poverty. Nothing will make you so 
clearly conscious of your weakness as the attempt 
to aid the weak. 

But no one ever even tried to help without 
being helped. Burden-bearing is the best gym- 
nasium. The foolish man speedily becomes wise 
when he sets himself with all his heart at helping 
the unfortunate. The feeble find a strange power 
coming into their arms as soon as they place them 
under a fallen brother or sister. There is noth- 
ing in the world that most men need so much as 
to help those in need. 



189 



The Joy of Service 



What kind of service is joyous ? All kinds to 
which God calls us. Some think of prayer, Bible- 
reading, and sermon- hearing as service — an idea 
so masterful that we have come to call our meet- 
ings for those purposes the services of the church. 

Others, perhaps neglecting these services, think 
they serve God acceptably only when they are 
busy on some errand of charity, giving money or 
comforting the sorrowful. And neither party is 
right, because both are right. Richard Thomas 
has drawn the true lesson from that Bethany in- 
cident : 

" She who has chosen Martha's part, 
The planning head, the steady heart, 
So full of household work and care, 
Intent on serving everywhere, 
May also Mary's secret know, 
Nor yet her household cares forego ; 
May sit and learn at Jesus' feet, 
Nor leave her service incomplete." 

And Mary must also assume Martha. One day, 
in the capital city of Ohio, a wretched drunken 
woman was sitting, maudlin, on the curbstone, 
surrounded by a crowd of teasing boys. A car- 
riage, passing in the street, suddenly stopped, 
and a lady got out. She talked with the miser- 
able creature a while, then put her in her car- 
riage, and drove off. That lady was the wife of 
Governor Hayes, who afterward became Presi- 
dent of the United States. Her character became 
a blessed incentive to thousands of others because 
it made itself manifest in Christ-like deeds. 

All loving service is service of Christ. A beau- 

190 



The Joy of Service 

tiful fable is told of that kindly saint, Elizabeth 
of Hungary. One day she found a leprous child, 
and because there seemed no other place to put 
it, she laid it in her own bed in the palace. 
Hearing of what had happened, her husband, 
■filled with disgust, went to look at the loathsome 
object ; and lo ! when he turned down the coverlet 
he saw the Christ- child, glowing with light and 
radiant with beauty. Such a transformation 
awaits even the most disagreeable duty, if done 
in the spirit of love. 

When we come really to believe this great 
truth, we shall seek for no other reward for our 
service than just Christ's glad presence at the 
goal. And we shall go to every task with eager 
joy, because Christ will await us in it. We shall 
grow to be like that English soldier in India. 
The doctor was inspecting the troops to see who 
were fit to join in the attack of Delhi, and passed 
by this youth, who looked sick. "For God's 
sake," exclaimed the young hero, u don't say I 
am unfit for duty. It's only a touch of fever, and 
the sound of the bugle will make me well." 

Such is the ardor with which we Christians 
should leap forward at Christ's summons. And 
if the work is hard or the undertaking danger- 
ous, still we should say with the poet : 



"I may, like Brainerd, perish in ray bloom, 
A group of Indians weeping round my tomb ; 
I may, like Martyn, lay my burning head 
In some lone Persian hut or Turkish shed ; 
I may — but never let my soul repine ; 

' Lo, I am with you ' — heaven is in that line ; 
Tropic or pole, or mild or burning zone 
Is but a step from my celestial throne. ' ' 

191 



Seek Souls 



The parables of the lost sheep and the lost 
coin are favorites of Christendom. It is beautiful 
to think of the Good Shepherd leaving the ninety 
and nine and faring forth through darkness and 
storm to find the one sheep that is lost. The 
picture is a moving one ; but does it move us ? 
Is not the greater part of our church activities 
merely a fattening of the ninety and nine ? Is 
not our church "work" largely a getting ready 
for Christ's real work? Are not our so-called 
' i services " only a preparation for service % And 
then, when we are prepared, nay, when we are 
surfeited with gospel truth and when sermons and 
prayer meetings have ceased to inspire us because 
of our very familiarity with the principles of the 
Christ-like life, do we go out into the darkness 
with our light, into the waste places with our 
surplus food? Or do we not, rather, approve 
ourselves because we have approved the plan of 
salvation, and so rest satisfied without saving a 
single soul % 

These words are not for you if you are hon- 
estly, earnestly, trying in Christ's strength to 
save some sinner out of the fold ; but if you are 
not, they are for you. 

All men would be soul-seekers if they could 
be self-seekers at the same time. If we could 
be missionaries without taking trouble, Paul's 
mantle would be on all our shoulders. But you 
can't stay in the warm fold and at the same time 
hunt lost sheep. 

192 



Seek Souls 

Love of the world and love of souls cannot 
dwell together in any heart. Soul-saving will 
swallow up your money, it will eat into your 
time, it will devour your strength. You cannot 
serve God and mammon. There is room on your 
head for only one crown. Shall it be of pewter or 
of diamonds? 

Lost sheep stray into hard places. You can- 
not go after them and keep in the pleasant mead- 
ows. 

If you have a pair of legs, you can go after 
them, though. You can ask, " Do you love 
Christ?" You can write a letter : "I wish you 
would follow my Christ." It is not easy, but it 
is entirely feasible for any one. 

Personal, definite work is the only kind that 
counts. Standing at the door of the sheepfold 
and making proclamation : l i Come here, all you 
lost sheep, and let me save you," will do no good. 
You must go where the lost sheep are ; you must 
follow the track of one of them. 

How ashamed I am when I think of the Klon- 
dike, of those determined fellows climbing up 
into those rocky fastnesses over toils unimagin- 
able and privations all but unendurable ; and 
they do it merely for grains of yellow dust. 
Souls are the fine gold of the universe. Shall we 
sit in our easy chairs and expect them to fall into 
our laps? Nay, let us forth into the Klon- 
dikes! Undismayed by obstacles, unmoved by 
rebuffs, the splendid zeal men show in their pur- 
suit of perishable wealth let us manifest in our 
supreme, our heavenly calling, the search for 
souls. 



193 



How to Get Rid of Sin 



There was a stump in our yard. It was an 
ugly thing, and directly in the way of the lawn- 
mower, yet for various unreasonable reasons it 
was preserved year after year. Certain members 
of the family had become accustomed to it, as a 
man becomes accustomed to a decayed tooth and 
will not have it out. A box of plants was set 
upon the top. Vines were trained up from be- 
low. So it was expected that the stump would 
be hidden from view. 

But the top began to cave in, so that the box 
had to come down. Slabs of bark began to fall 
off, bringing the vines with them. The ground 
was littered with chips of rotten wood, which 
clogged the lawn-mower. Still, for months, that 
ugly stump was preserved, an eyesore and a nui- 
sance. 

How to get rid of sin ? Just as, finally, we got 
rid of the stump. Stop trying to hide it, to 
beautify it, to utilize it, and set yourself to ex- 
terminate it. Pull it up, roots and all. Plant 
grass seed over the place. 

I remember a letter I received once from a 
young clergyman far away in South Africa. He 
was the victim of a secret sin that was under- 
mining his life, and he asked me, a perfect 
stranger, what he should do. The letter itself, 
in its undertone of weakness, revealed the situa- 
tion. He was in love with the sin. He did not 
really wish release from it. He wanted to grow 
vines over the stump. 

There is much of such dishonest struggling 

194 



How to Get Rid of Sin 

against sin, barring the front door, but leaving 
the back door invitingly open. There is very 
little of the earnestness of Martin Lnther, who 
threw his inkstand at the devil, or of that young 
prince who, tempted by his base father to a fas- 
cinating sin, deliberately bit off his tongue that 
the pain might drive the evil thoughts from his 
mind. There is little "resisting unto death, 
striving against sin." As Matthew Arnold 
sung, 

' ' We do not what we ought, 
What we ought not, we do, 
And lean upon the thought 
That chance will bring us through." 

Let us learn that there is no chance in all God's 
universe. What a man sows, he must reap. As 
certainly as a hand thrust into boiling steel will 
get burned to the bone, so surely does any sinful 
act inflict its own punishment. It may be de- 
layed, but it will come No eye may see it, but 
the sinner will be eaten at the heart. 

If you would get rid of sin, therefore, you 
must both fear it and hate it, and I know of no 
better way to this fear and hatred than by a 
thorough study of the Bible. Its histories paint 
the results of sin more terribly than any other 
book. Its exhortations cry out most strenuously 
against it. Its arguments show the folly of sin 
most convincingly. And, best of all, at the 
heart of the Book is the Cross, which is the sin- 
ner's only hope and his sure salvation. If you 
would flee from your sin, flee to the Bible. 



195 



The Pathway to Peace 



There are those who say " Peace, Peace, when 
there is no peace." To ignore one's sin, to 
refuse to think of duty, to withhold one's self 
from contact with the evil and sorrow of earth — 
this is the pathway to peace taken by many men j 
but they never reach their goal. 

As Canon Kingsley says, u There is a discon- 
tent which is certain, sooner or later, to bring 
with it the peace of God. It is to be discon- 
tented with ourselves, as very few are. " To be dis- 
contented with our lot is peace-destroying ; but 
to " scorn content and live laborious days " is at 
least the fair beginning of peace. 

No one knows what peace is, however unruffled 
his life and fortunate his circumstances, until 
his heart is at rest. u It is when there is calm at 
the centre," says Dr. Blair, ''that there will be 
real quiet of the surface." 

And now, after all the " Don't Worry Clubs" 
and the study of the will, there remains only 
one sure way of getting a peaceful heart, and 
that is to get Christ in it. Dr. Edward 
Judson thus translates the familiar verse of 
Isaiah: "The soul whom Thou dost sustain, 
Thou wilt mold into perfect peace ; because he 
trusted in Thee." That is, "the believer is the 
formless lump of clay. Jehovah is the artist. 
The outcome is an exquisite vase, bearing the 
legend, Perfect peace." 

196 



The Pathway to Peace 

Edward Everett Hale's shrewd advice is : 
' ' Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a 
time. Some people bear three kinds — all they 
have had, all they have now, and all they expect 
to have." That is because they do not trust 
God. The vase of their lives is ugly and awry. 
"If God," said Bushnell, "is really preparing 
us all to become that which is the very highest 
and best thing possible, there ought never to be 
a discouraged or uncheerful being in the world." 

A sailor in a shipwreck was once thrown upon 
a small rock, and clung to it, in great danger, 
until the tide went down. "Say, Jim," asked 
his friends after he was rescued, " didn't you 
shake with fear when you were hanging on that 
rock?" "Yes; but the rock didn't," was the 
significant reply. Christ is the Eock of Ages. 
Cling to Him, and you will be at rest. 

"They that find Christ, find peace. 
A great rock's shadow in a weary land; 
Fountains and palm-trees after desert sand ; 
After the prison pen and chains — release! 
O glad the heart that enters into rest! 
O sweet the song at even when Christ is guest! " 

There is only one way to get into our lives 
Christ, the Peace-giver. That is, obey Him ! 
Fenelon puts the truth in formal fashion when 
he says : l i True peace consists only in the pos- 
session of God ; and the possession of God here 
below is only to be found in submission to the 
faith and in obedience to the law." 
Who would not have peace % 
Who, then, would not have Christ ? 

197 



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